Buffett Screener
Scores each stock against Warren Buffett's 5 balance-sheet rules of thumb and 7 income-statement rules of thumb — 12 points total — using today's real market and fundamentals data.
Based on Brian Feroldi's summary of Buffett's rules of thumb. Sortable, filterable, and computed fresh from the same screening engine used to build the reports this page is derived from. Not investment advice.
Screener
| Rank | Ticker | Company | Sector | Price | MktCap | P/E | vs Sector | Div% | BS | Inc | Total | R1 | R2 | R3 | R4 | R5 | I1 | I2 | I3 | I4 | I5 | I6 | I7 | YTD% | >50DMA | >200DMA | GC | Mom |
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The 12 rules
Balance sheet (0-5): (1) cash beats total debt, (2) total liabilities under 0.8x equity, (3) no preferred stock, (4) retained earnings growing year over year, (5) treasury stock exists (the company buys back its own shares).
Income statement (0-7): (1) gross margin over 40%, (2) SG&A under 30% of gross profit, (3) R&D under 30% of gross profit, (4) interest expense under 15% of operating income, (5) income tax margin roughly 20% (10-30% band), (6) net margin over 20%, (7) EPS growing year over year and positive.
Read this before trusting a score
- Rules 2, 3, and 4 (SG&A, R&D, interest) default to a pass when the company doesn't report that line item separately — not because the ratio is favorable, but because there's nothing to divide. A high score built on several of these defaults is weaker evidence than one built on rules that were actually computed.
- Rule 1 (cash beats debt) uses "Total Debt" literally, including lease obligations. Some analysts exclude leases from debt; this screener does not, so lease-heavy businesses (restaurants, retailers) fail this rule more often than a manual read would.
- Rule 5's "~20%" tax rule is a 10-30% band, not an exact match — even Buffett's own worked examples treat this rule loosely.
- ETFs are excluded (SPY, QQQ, sector SPDRs, and similar funds tracked elsewhere on this site) — they have no balance sheet or income statement, so these rules don't apply to them.
- Data comes from Yahoo Finance via an unofficial API — free, generally reliable, but with no uptime guarantee and occasional gaps for individual tickers.
- Not investment advice. This is a mechanical rules-of-thumb screen, not a recommendation to buy or sell anything.