While running a simple screen for Cheap Growth stocks, I had something unusual happen. There was not a single stock that met the criteria. That's right, zero, zilch, nada. The screen only had three criteria; a PEG ratio of .75 or lower, a debt to equity ratio of .8 or lower, and an expected growth rate of 25% for the next 5 years. Only two possible conclusions can be drawn from this. Conclusion A, growth stocks are way over valued at this time. Conlusion B, analyst estimates for earnings growth are still very bearish, too bearish in fact.
My past experience with this screen leads to me too conclusion B. I started using this screen six months prior to the beginning of the bear market. At that time, there was no shortage of cheap growers. In fact I had to add a market cap component to reduce the number of possible candidates. Since the screen depends heavily on analyst earnings estimates and considering the events that occurred half a year later, I would conclude that analysts were too
