The answer is quite simply: No.
There is categorically no stock screening strategy based on any quantative measure (or qualitative measure) that can possibly help any mortal, individual investor create a profitable market-beating portfolio. Computer run by massive hedge funds can surely use quantitative strategies to pick stocks, but individuals will fail in this endeavor over the long-term, especially since they will be competing against $1 billion hedge funds that employ an army of brilliant mathematicians to exploit quantatitive selection strategies.
In fact, I have experimented with a myriad of fundamental-based stock selection strategies over the last few years and have been faced with horrendous results.
The reason is simple: Even if a particular investment strategy based upon quantitative selection criteria is proven to work (very doubtful, but of course it's possible) and it makes logical sense, an individual investor cannot possibly benefit from the strategy. This is because each of these strategies can only be proven to work on the basis of huge number of investments, i.e. "the long-run", made under almost perfect timing circumstances. The amount of stocks and diversification that any strategy entails is simply huge, and not practically possible for any individual investor to replicate. So what happens is that an individual investor will be forced to select only specific stocks that fit the criteria, rather than buying the full basket of stocks, that the model will suggest. This need to "cut back" on picks, due to monetary and basic trading constraints, immediately invalidates the strategy.
Basically, only computers and very large i.e. billion dollar, funds can properly take advantage of potentially lucrative quantitative strategies or selection strategies to build very large diversified portfolios of market-beating investments (and I say potentially, since this is a game where every potential strategy is quickly invalidated thru its discovery). For individual investors any reliance on some sort of quantitative strategy is doomed to fail in the long run.
What's an investor to do? I am beginning to think it pays to simply stick to ETF's and/or a few well selected stocks that have been beaten to a pulp (more on that at a later date).
