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Piotroski F-Score Screener

Joseph Piotroski's 9-point value investing screen targets small-cap, high book-to-market stocks with improving fundamentals. Only stocks in the bottom third of market capitalization, top 20% of book-to-market, with <10 analysts covering them, pass the filter.

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F-Score: 8–9 Strong · 5–7 Moderate · 0–4 Weak
Analyst filter: Passes if <10 analysts or no coverage (Yahoo Finance).
Expand rows by clicking to see the full signal-by-signal breakdown.

How to Interpret the Score

Joseph Piotroski's 2000 paper "Value Investing: The Use of Historical Financial Statement Information to Separate Winners from Losers" found that a simple 9-point scoring system can distinguish genuine value from value traps within the distressed small-cap, high book-to-market universe.

8–9
Strong — Buy
Improving profitability, de-leveraging, and operating efficiency. These stocks significantly outperformed in Piotroski's study. Buy candidates.
5–7
Moderate — Hold / Watch
Mixed fundamental signals. Some improvements, some red flags. Needs additional analysis before a decision.
0–4
Weak — Avoid / Sell
Deteriorating fundamentals — burning cash, increasing debt, shrinking margins. These are the real value traps. Avoid or short.

Key insight: Not all cheap stocks are bargains. The F-Score filters out genuinely distressed companies from those that are temporarily out of favor but have sound fundamentals. Piotroski found that buying high-scoring (8–9) value stocks and avoiding low-scoring (0–4) ones produced a significant market-beating return. For mid-range scores (5–7), additional research on the specific signals is advised.