Thanks to new online software, you can tailor your stock portfolio like the pros

INVESTORS, BEHOLD. HERE, IN THE guise of a simple software package, is your miracle. For expert and novice alike, it's something akin to the tablets delivered on Mount Sinai and the gift of fire rolled into one: the stock screen.

Sound like hype? Don't laugh. Stock screening programs, readily available in a variety of places on the Internet, do a lot to live up to that billing. Start with the fact that they provide the same tools professionals use. Ever since computers were harnessed to the task of choosing investments, portfolio managers have used screens to sift through mountains of stock market data to unearth the best shares.

It's not the breadth of information alone that makes stock screens so special. A sizable portion of their beauty lies in speed. Generally speaking, counting the amount of time it takes to log on, you'll spend only five to 10 minutes to input a set of orders and collect a list of stocks. That means it's now possible to tailor a portfolio to fit your needs, risk tolerance and future plans in one sitting. Better yet, you needn't have a degree in computer engineering or great investing expertise to get started. And, if you're not won over yet, consider the price of the advice in many cases--it's free!

What exactly is a stock screen? You probably remember seeing movies depicting crusty old prospectors panning mountain streams in Search of gold. They'd dip into the river's silt, swirl the mud and water about a bit, skim the contents and collect the shiniest rocks. A stock screen works much like the prospector's pan. Its software scoops up data on thousands of stocks that trade publicly on the New York Stock Exchange, American Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. Next, it sifts through the numbers according to requirements or criteria you plug in, discarding the companies that don't meet your goals. For example, if you're looking for corporations that are growing earnings at 20% or more a year yet are trading at a price-to-earnings multiple (P/E) of 30 or less, a screen will ferret out a list of candidates for your researching pleasure.

That's a marked break with the past. Not that long ago, the average individual investor's stock-picking efforts were a hit-or-miss venture. Choosing a company you'd invest in amounted to wading through mounds of prospectuses, scanning an infinite array of numbers or just dumb luck based on a tip from a friend. Shelling out extra money in trading commissions, might get you a few recommendations from your broker.

If stock screens are uncharted territory for you, don't fret. We've scouted the Net for places to go. Even if you're well versed in screening capabilities, we've not only provided a list of things to look for, but a few ideas to get you started.

Let's start with the screens themselves, which can be found at a number of good sites on the Web. We suggest two things as you start off: keep it simple and make sure it's free.

Many manuals and aids for individual investors come in two varieties: beginning and advanced. The same holds true for screens on the Net. If you're just getting the knack of how stocks are valued and how the market works, the fact that the online sites provide hand-holding is good news. Be forewarned, however: At the very least, you'll need to know the basics.

A crash course includes learning about P/Es, derived by dividing a stock's price by its profits (earnings per share). Investors use these numbers to compare one share's value to another's. Then there are earnings growth rates, which amount to educated guesses about how quickly a company is growing profits annually. It's also good to have a grasp of dividends (profits a company regularly distributes to shareholders quarterly) and yields (a stock's dividend divided by its current share price). Past that, many screens delve into more detailed measures, including price-to-book ratios (a stock's share price divided by the value of its hard and fast assets) or return on equity, a measure of how company management uses its cash resources from shareholders.

If all of this makes you more than a little queasy, bone up with a good manual on the stock market and how stocks work (such as The Nearest Little Guide to Stock Mark et Investing by Jason Kelly, Plume, $12.95). And by just experimenting with a stock screen, you'll be able to quickly learn and assimilate the same concepts used by pros at the big investing firms.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

It all starts with a database. No matter how large or small, stock screens work with large pools of information. They include a library of company names and the one- to five-letter ticker symbols that professionals use to identify stocks (INTC for Intel or KM for Kmart). Screens are also loaded with a slew of company-specific facts and figures. There are earnings growth rates, for one, to point out how quickly the CEO of a given organization is conquering the world. P/Es indicate whether shares are cheap or expensive relative to the market or even a specific industry.

But a screen is only as good as the facts and figures it's accessing. Often stock screens tap into companies that poll industry analysts at the big Wall Street brokerage firms such as Merrill Lynch and Salomon Smith Barney. Firms like I/B/E/S, Zacks and First Call, to name a few of the most reputable, then combine numbers, tabulate averages and provide what are called "consensus" figures, or averages of what Wall Street projects for a firm. A good screening program will serve up those kinds of numbers for your efforts.

Remember, too, that fresh data ensures your screen will be up-to-date, since things on Wall Street have a way of changing overnight. For instance, Acme Rocket Corp. might release news to the press that its marvel of a booster engine didn't make as much money during the last quarter as expected. Almost automatically, analysts will sharpen their pencils, rush headlong through their books and lower their estimates of revenues, earnings and even the rate they feel Acme can grow its profits.

The market takes these sorts of assumptions seriously because they help determine how much a stock is worth now and in the future. Needless to say, the figures stockpiled by consensus estimate firms will probably dip as well. To provide the most accurate figures, a good screen will update its reservoir of numbers regularly.

GETTING OUT OF ME STARTING BLOCKS

In our search of stock screens on the Internet, we came up with four winning sites where you needn't pay a dime for the goods. All update daily, and use solid sources for their data. Perhaps the simplest and most straightforward can be found on Quicken's site (www.quicken. com/investments/stocks/search). There you can screen the entire market or go industry by industry, using a no-nonsense format.

Marketplayer (www.marketlayer.com) is by far the most comprehensive in its choice of different criteria. Our only complaint is that Marketplayer's site can be a bit daunting if you're just learning to screen. A lot of the terms--for example, forward P/E (a company's price-to-earnings multiple for the upcoming year)--may be a bit much for initial investors. We suggest that you first go to the simple screening heading in the left margin of the site or try your hand at a few of the model screens provided. Another solution: click on the support heading in the left margin and send a query for assistance to Marketplayer via e-mail.

Another site we like, DailyStocks (www.dailystocks.com), not only offers a choice of screens, but also has links to a veritable diamond mine of company and stock information. Again, the terminology can get a bit meaty; as an entry point, we suggest you click at the heading "Quick Pre-Screened." There you'll find a number of pre-set screens to help you get up to speed. Finally, you might want to check in at www.stockscreener.com, run by Hoover's.

SEARCHING FOR GOOD IDEAS AND PICKS

Once you've honed an ability to parse and pare the market, what do you do? For one, even if you're a market expert, it makes sense to first take a test drive by running a few of the prepackaged screens a site offers. At DailyStocks' pre-screened window, for instance, it's possible to call up a list of shares below $10 in price with an average annual growth rate of 20% or greater.

After a few runs with the training wheels on, you'll probably want to start with a few of your own creations. You'll find that while screens are chock-full of features that help whittle the scope of the market down to size, many screens can be surgically precise as well, pruning your choices down to anywhere from one to several stocks.