CANSLIM Investing

CANSLIM was created by William O'Neil who analyzed the characteristics of more than 500 successful companies from 1953 to 1993 to derive their winning factors.

It is a reverse engineering compared to James O'Shaughnessy's "What Works On Wall Street".
  • O'Shaughnessy selected stocks based on fundamental/technical factors and then looked at their performances.

  • On the other hand, O'Neil selected the best performing stocks each year and then analyzed their fundamental and technical characteristics.

Although O'Neil is not a mechanical investor, mechanical stock picking is well suited to CANSLIM. Indeed, the main premise of mechanical stock picking is to buy a large number of stocks sharing a set of common factors that have proven to provide superior performances.

Large number of stocks ensures that you will include few spectacular deals. You will also include few losing ones but asymmetry in win/loss makes it a favorable strategy. In fact, a losing stock cannot lose more than 100%, but a spectacular stock can gain much more than that.

It is unreasonable to try to go only for the spectacular gains: O'Neil only shows the good examples in his book "How to make money in the Stock Market" but NO strategy can win all the time. Unfortunately, investment books seldom highlight this point.

Let's see how to pick CANSLIM stocks usiing the stock screening process.

Investing Universe Go back to Top

Small/Mid Cap: the S of CANSLIM

S is for Supply and Demand. When a company with low number of shares outstanding starts to get noticed, it requires less buying power than a large cap to start to skyrocket. O'Neil therefore prefers companies with less than 25 Millions shares outstanding. This basically means small/mid cap unless you buy companies at 1,000$/share. If, you're like most people, buying shares between 10$ and 100$, that means market cap between 250 Millions and 2.5 Billions.

In addition, always make sure liquidity is adequate not to lose everything to high Bid-Ask spread.

Primary Theme Go back to Top

Earning per Share EPS Rank: the C and A of CANSLIM

O'Neil found that most successful stocks had Earning Growth Acceleration before their most impressive price increase.

The Earning Per Share Rank (EPS Rank) measures a company's EPS Growth relative to the entire market. An EPS Rank of 80 means that a company has an EPS growth better than 80% of all other companies. The ranking usually takes into account growth over the last 5 years and last few quarters with higher weights assigned to recent data.

Because of higher weights assigned to recent growth, it is a prime criterion for screening for Earning Growth Acceleration.

C means Current Quarterly Earnings and A means Annual Earnings. O'Neil wants 20% annual growth over the last 5 years and recent acceleration in the quarterly growth. Using EPS Rank>80, you will likely meet the C and A criteria.

Note: not many stock screeners provide the EPS Rank. You may build a series of Growth tests to approximate.


Relative Strength Rank: the L of CANSLIM

Relative Strength Rank measures a stock's price performance relative to the entire market over a period (e.g. 1 month, 3 months, 1 year). A Relative Strength of 70 means that a stock has outperformed 70% of all other stocks during the period under consideration.

L is for Leaders: 0'Neil wants companies that have a leadership in their industry. A 12 months Relative Strength >80 ensures you're buying leading companies, not laggards.

Secondary Theme Go back to Top

The N, I and M of CANSLIM

N stands for New products, New management team or New high in the stock price:

The easiest to implement with stock screeners is "New High in the stock price". You may use for instance "Closing Price > 0.85*"52 weeks High".


M is for Market direction:

Few stocks climb in a Bear Market. O'Neil wants you to be in the market when this one is or is about to go up. He shows many indicators in "How to make money in Stocks", however all his timing indicators are quite subjective: 2 different investors will interpret them differently.

By opposition, mechanical market timing signals are non ambiguous. A well adapted timing signal to CANSLIM is the Market's Moving Average.

  • Buy a portfolio of CANSLIM stocks when the market's 50 Days Moving Average crosses above its 200 Days Moving Average.


  • Sell when the market's 50 days moving average crosses its 200 days moving average down and wait for the next up crossover to re-run the screen and buy new stocks.

Check John Markman's NASDAQ Timing with Moving Averages and the Hirsh organization's NASDAQ Timing with MACD for strategies combining momentum stock picking with market timing.


I is for Institutional ownership

Major market players are Institutional Investors: only them can make a share price move significantly. O'Neil wants to see increasing Institutional Ownership.

Ranking and Number of Stocks Go back to Top

Not a lot of stocks will pass a CANSLIM screen, there's quite a lot of criteria there so Ranking may not be required and you can simply buy all stocks passing. If really required, Relative Strength - a classic momentum sorting parameter - can be used.

O'Neil analyzed 500 spectacular stocks over 40 years, that's only about 12 stocks per year so don't expect to see CANSLIM stocks popping out every week. Now, it is unlikely that you will select only the successful stocks, so it is advisable to buy more than 12 stocks/year. A minimum 25 Stocks portfolio seems more reasonable, especially if you don't use Stop Loss.

Holding Period / Stop Loss

CANSLIM is a Momentum Investing despite O'Neil's claim that it is not. Momentum does not add value when holding period exceeds 1 year.

CANSLIM should be used with holding period ≤ 1 year. If you use CANSLIM with Market Timing, as O'Neil suggests, your holding period will coincide with the timing signals.


O'Neil recommends using Stop Loss - an unemotional, mechanical way to get out of a stock - However, if you suffer loss aversion, it may be difficult for you to use Stop Loss.

You may get rid of Stop Loss by holding many stocks in your CANSLIM Portfolio: if 1 or 2 stocks tank from a 25 stocks portfolio, it won't represent too much of your portfolio's value. This is a benefit of large number of holdings.

Sample CANSLIM Screen Go back to Top

Screening Theme CANSLIM
Investing Universe Shares Outstanding < 25M, Liquidity
Primary Theme EPS Rank > 80,
Relative Strength > 80
Secondary Theme(s) Price close to 52 weeks high,
Institutional Ownership
Ranking Relative Strength
Number Of Holdings ≥25
Holding Period ≤1 year and/or Stop Loss


Here is a CANSLIM Screen using MSN Deluxe Stock Screener.
MSN does not provide the EPS Rank, so I build a series of tests with what's available to screen for Growth Acceleration.

Canslim stock picking with MSN Deluxe screener

If you have MSN Deluxe Stock Screener installed (Free), you can click on the following link to get the list of stocks that currently qualify: CANSLIM


If you are very serious with CANSLIM, check Pitbull Investor StockTables: a stock screener adapted to CANSLIM that includes all the criteria used by O'Neil (Earning Per Share Rank, Relative Strength Rank, Accumulation/Distribution and more).

Finally, remember that CANSLIM is an aggressive growth/momentum strategy and should be followed only if you can stomach very high volatility: the combination of Small/Mid Cap, high growth and high Relative Strength is not for the faint hearted.





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