LOS D requires us to:
describe the use of financial statement analysis in screening for potential equity investments
Screening is filtering a set of potential investments into smaller sets that meet certain criteria. So for screening the potential equity investments, we can filter the same using ratios, such as price-earnings ratio, profitability, returns on equity, etc.
Once the screening is done and equities have been selected, they could be backtested using a specific set of criteria to screen historical data to determine, how the portfolios based on those criteria have performed. Though, the historical performance is not an assurance for future performance.
There is a certain limitation to the screening, they are:
a. When screening with ratios, they are not adjusted for GAAP vs. IFRS. Different companies prepare their financial statements based on different standards, estimates, and assumptions. Thus achieving perfect comparability becomes really difficult.
b. Backtesting may not be relevant for future periods.