Trending Value Screener

Cheap stocks with momentum. Rank the US market by six valuation metrics, take the cheapest 10%, sort by price performance. O'Shaughnessy's top strategy in plain English.

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Shibui Finance is a free Trending Value screener that ranks 10,000+ US stocks by Value Composite Two (the average percentile across six valuation metrics) and six-month price momentum. All six metrics are pre-computed, so you describe the screen in plain English and Claude ranks the entire market in one pass. No other free screener computes O'Shaughnessy's composite value ranking across the full US market.

James O'Shaughnessy tested dozens of strategies across more than 50 years of market data in "What Works on Wall Street." The single best performer: Trending Value. The idea is simple. Cheap stocks alone underperform because many are cheap for good reason. But cheap stocks with rising prices are a different story. They are undervalued and the market is starting to notice. The strategy works in two steps. First, rank every stock by Value Composite Two, the average percentile rank across six valuation measures. Second, take the cheapest decile and sort by six-month price momentum. The composite approach avoids single-metric traps: a stock can look cheap on P/E but expensive on EV/EBITDA. Averaging six metrics catches companies that are genuinely cheap across the board. Shibui has all six metrics pre-computed for 10,000+ US stocks. You describe the screen and Claude ranks the entire market in one pass. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see the Trending Value screening guide.

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What the screener checks

Six-metric composite value

Percentile-rank each stock on price-to-book, trailing P/E, price-to-sales, price-to-cash-flow, EV/EBITDA, and shareholder yield. Average the ranks. A stock in the bottom decile is cheap on most measures simultaneously, not just one.

Momentum sort

After filtering to the cheapest decile, sort by six-month price return. This removes the value traps: stocks that are cheap and still falling. What remains are cheap stocks where something has changed and the price is responding.

Historical screening

Run the screen at any point in the past using daily valuation data back to 1993 and quarterly financials back to 1990. Test whether the cheapest decile with momentum actually outperformed. O'Shaughnessy's backtests covered 1926 to 2009.

Plain English

No spreadsheet formulas, no manual percentile calculations. Describe the screen you want and Claude ranks every stock by the composite, filters to the cheapest decile, and sorts by momentum. Change thresholds, add quality filters, or adjust the market cap floor in the same conversation.

The six valuation metrics

Value Composite Two ranks each stock across the market on these six measures. For the first five, a lower value means cheaper. For shareholder yield, a higher value means more capital returned to shareholders. The composite score is the average of all six percentile ranks.

# Metric What it measures Ranked
1 Price-to-Book Market price relative to net assets. Classic value measure from Graham and Fama-French Lower = cheaper
2 Trailing P/E Price relative to trailing twelve months of earnings Lower = cheaper
3 Price-to-Sales Price relative to revenue. Useful for low-margin businesses where P/E is extreme Lower = cheaper
4 Price-to-Cash-Flow Price relative to free cash flow. More manipulation-resistant than earnings Lower = cheaper
5 EV/EBITDA Enterprise value relative to operating earnings. Accounts for debt differences Lower = cheaper
6 Shareholder Yield Dividends + buybacks as a percentage of market cap (total capital return) Higher = better

The composite is the key. A stock can look cheap on P/E because of a one-time earnings spike, or cheap on P/B because of asset impairments. Averaging across six metrics catches companies that are genuinely undervalued, not just distorted on one ratio. Stocks with negative earnings or negative free cash flow are excluded from the ranking because their P/E and P/CF ratios are undefined. This filters out unprofitable companies, which is intentional: O'Shaughnessy's strategy requires demonstrated profitability.

Shareholder yield is from Meb Faber's framework: dividends plus net share buybacks from the trailing four quarters, divided by market cap. See the Shareholder Yield screener for the full methodology. Adding it to the composite means the screen favors companies returning capital to shareholders, not just companies that appear statistically cheap.

Example screens

On Shibui, you ask

"Compute O'Shaughnessy's Trending Value screen for all US common stocks above $200 million market cap. Step 1: rank each stock by Value Composite Two, the average percentile rank across six metrics: price-to-book (lower = cheaper), trailing P/E (lower = cheaper), price-to-sales (lower = cheaper), price-to-cash-flow (lower = cheaper), EV/EBITDA (lower = cheaper), and shareholder yield (dividends + net buybacks from the last 4 quarters / market cap, higher = better). Exclude stocks with negative P/E or negative cash flow. Step 2: take the cheapest decile (lowest 10% by VC2 score). Step 3: sort by 6-month price return, highest first. Show the top 25 with VC2 percentile, each valuation metric, shareholder yield, and 6-month return."

The full Trending Value screen. Claude percentile-ranks every profitable stock on six valuation measures, averages the ranks, takes the bottom 10%, and sorts by momentum. The result is cheap-across-the-board stocks with the strongest recent price performance. Expect a mix of small and mid caps in energy, financials, consumer discretionary, and industrials. Large-cap tech rarely qualifies because it is rarely in the cheapest decile on all six metrics.

On Shibui, you ask

"Run the Trending Value screen (O'Shaughnessy) for US stocks above $5 billion market cap only. Value Composite Two = average percentile rank across price-to-book, trailing P/E, price-to-sales, price-to-cash-flow, EV/EBITDA (all lower = cheaper), and shareholder yield (higher = better). Take the cheapest 20% (not decile, since the large-cap universe is smaller), sort by 6-month momentum. Show the top 15 with each metric and sector."

A large-cap variant. The cheapest decile of the full market is dominated by small caps. Restricting to $5 billion and above gives you recognizable names, but the universe is smaller so the cheapest 20% (quintile) replaces the decile filter. Companies like GM, Kohl's, or Citigroup can appear here when their valuation ratios compress while their stocks recover.

On Shibui, you ask

"Run the Trending Value screen within the Industrials sector only. Rank all US Industrial stocks above $500 million by Value Composite Two (average percentile of P/B, P/E, P/S, P/CF, EV/EBITDA lower-is-cheaper + shareholder yield higher-is-better). Take the cheapest quintile, sort by 6-month return. This is a sector rotation variant, finding the cheapest Industrial stocks with momentum."

A sector rotation variant. Instead of ranking across the entire market, rank within a single sector. This finds the cheapest Industrials with momentum, the cheapest Healthcare names with momentum, or the cheapest Energy stocks moving up. Useful when you have a sector thesis and want to find the most undervalued names within it that are already recovering.

How it compares to other Trending Value tools

Most Trending Value implementations are behind paywalls or require manual spreadsheet work. Shibui computes the full six-metric composite, filters by decile, and sorts by momentum in a single natural-language query.

Feature Shibui ValueSignals Quant Investing Finviz
Price Free $29-49/mo $25-39/mo Free / $24.96/mo
Value Composite Two Yes (6 metrics) Yes (pre-built) Yes (O'Shaughnessy screens) No (individual filters only)
Momentum sort on value decile Yes (any momentum window) Yes (fixed periods) Yes (fixed periods) No
Custom metric weights Yes (describe in English) Limited Limited No
Combine with quality filters Yes (Piotroski, Beneish, any) Some pre-built Some pre-built Limited
Historical backtesting Yes (30+ years) Limited Limited No
Natural language queries Yes No No No
Alerts / automation No Yes No No

ValueSignals and Quant Investing offer pre-built O'Shaughnessy screens with fixed parameters. The trade-off is price and flexibility. On Shibui, you define the composite, adjust the decile threshold, change the momentum window, or add any other filter in a single query. For total capital return analysis (the sixth VC2 metric), see the Shareholder Yield screener. For financial strength scoring, see the Piotroski F-Score screener. For momentum leadership, see the RS Rating screener. For deep value without the composite, see the Graham Value screener. See the AI stock screener overview for how Shibui compares on other screening approaches.

Want to run this screen daily on a schedule? See the automated stock screener workflow for scheduling commands and prompt reliability patterns.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Trending Value strategy?

Trending Value is an investing strategy from James O'Shaughnessy's book "What Works on Wall Street." It combines deep value with price momentum in two steps. First, rank every stock by Value Composite Two, the average percentile rank across six valuation metrics: price-to-book, trailing P/E, price-to-sales, price-to-cash-flow, EV/EBITDA, and shareholder yield. Second, take the cheapest 10% (the top decile by composite value) and sort them by six-month price return. The result is cheap stocks that are already moving up. In O'Shaughnessy's 50-year backtests, this was the single best-performing strategy he tested.

Is there a free Trending Value screener?

Shibui Finance is a free Trending Value screener. Connect it to Claude (the free plan works) and describe the screen in plain English. Claude ranks all stocks by the six valuation metrics, computes the composite score, filters to the cheapest decile, and sorts by momentum in one pass. Other Trending Value tools (ValueSignals, Validea, Quant Investing) require paid subscriptions for full screening access.

What is Value Composite Two?

Value Composite Two (VC2) is a multi-metric valuation ranking from "What Works on Wall Street." For each stock, compute its percentile rank on six metrics: price-to-book, trailing P/E, price-to-sales, price-to-cash-flow, EV/EBITDA (all ranked lower-is-cheaper), and shareholder yield (ranked higher-is-better). Average the six percentile ranks. A stock in the bottom 10% by VC2 is cheap across most valuation measures simultaneously. This composite approach avoids single-metric traps where a stock looks cheap on one ratio but expensive on others.

Why combine value with momentum?

Cheap stocks alone underperform because many are cheap for good reason: deteriorating businesses, broken business models, or permanent capital impairment. Adding a momentum sort filters out the value traps. A stock that is cheap on six valuation metrics AND has strong recent price performance is more likely to be genuinely undervalued and starting to re-rate than one that is cheap and still falling. O'Shaughnessy's data showed that this combination outperformed pure value and pure momentum strategies individually.

Can you backtest Trending Value on Shibui?

Yes. Shibui has daily valuation metrics back to 1993 and quarterly financials back to 1990. You can ask Claude to run the Trending Value screen at any historical date and measure subsequent returns over 3, 6, or 12 months. This is a historical backtest, not a forward-looking simulation. Survivorship bias applies since delisted companies are not in the dataset. O'Shaughnessy's original backtests covered 1926 to 2009 using a different data source.

Does Finviz have a Trending Value screener?

No. Finviz has individual valuation filters (P/E, P/B, P/S) but cannot compute a composite percentile rank across multiple metrics or sort the result by momentum. You would need to export Finviz results to a spreadsheet and rank manually. Shibui computes the full Value Composite Two, filters to the cheapest decile, and sorts by six-month return in a single query.

Trending Value requires positive trailing earnings and positive free cash flow for the P/E and P/CF percentile ranks. This excludes unprofitable companies and cash-burning growth stocks, which is intentional in O'Shaughnessy's framework. The strategy was backtested on data from 1926 to 2009, a period with different market structure, fewer technology companies, and less algorithmic trading. Capacity is limited: the strategy works best in small and mid caps where fewer institutional investors are running similar screens. Rebalancing frequency matters (annual in the book). Data is end-of-day, US equities only (NYSE and NASDAQ), no real-time alerts, and not financial advice. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see the Trending Value screening guide. For related screening approaches, see the Shareholder Yield screener, the Piotroski F-Score screener, the RS Rating screener, or the Graham Value screener. For coverage details, see the data sources page.

Connect Shibui to Claude in 2 minutes

Shibui is free. Connect it to Claude (free or paid plan) and screen 10,000+ US stocks by Trending Value: six-metric composite value ranked by momentum in a single query.

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