What are the key takeaways from this Investing for Beginners episode?

Key insights include: **Screener Construction:** Build a stock screener using these seven specific filters: long-term revenue growth above 6% annually, stock-based compensation below 10% of revenue, negative cash from financing (capital returned not raised), PE below 20, net debt-to-EBITDA below 3.5, ROIC above 15%, and five-year revenue CAGR above 6%. Exclude biotech and Chinese-listed companies to reduce risk exposure.; **Price vs. Valuation Mindset:** A stock trading at $181 with a 16.5 PE can be cheaper than a $25 stock with a PE of 12 carrying significant business risk. Dollar price per share is irrelevant to value — PE ratio, forward earnings expectations, and business quality determine whether a stock is genuinely cheap or merely low-priced.; **Restaurant KPI — Comparable Sales:** When evaluating restaurant stocks, prioritize comparable same-store sales growth over total revenue. Brinker International (ticker: EAT), parent of Chili's, grew comparable sales 25% year-over-year and 8% annually over five years — outpacing McDonald's typical 3-5% — while still trading at a 16.5 trailing PE and 15 forward PE.

What did Andrew Sather discuss on Investing for Beginners?

Hosts Stephen Morris and Andrew Sather run a live stock screener on fiscal.ai using seven filters — including ROIC above 15%, PE below 20, and negative cash from financing — then evaluate Yelp, LendingTree, Brinker International, Yeti Holdings, Zoetis, and CarGurus in real time without prior preparation. Key topics include: **Screener Construction:** Build a stock screener using these seven specific filters: long-term revenue growth above 6% annually, stock-based compensation below 10% of revenue, negative cash from financing (capital returned not raised), PE below 20, net debt-to-EBITDA below 3.5, ROIC above 15%, and five-year revenue CAGR above 6%. Exclude biotech and Chinese-listed companies to reduce risk exposure.; **Price vs. Valuation Mindset:** A stock trading at $181 with a 16.5 PE can be cheaper than a $25 stock with a PE of 12 carrying significant business risk. Dollar price per share is irrelevant to value — PE ratio, forward earnings expectations, and business quality determine whether a stock is genuinely cheap or merely low-priced..

How long is this episode of Investing for Beginners?

This episode is 58 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

Investing for Beginners

Stop Overthinking Stock Screeners

July 23, 2026

58 min episode · 2 min read

Andrew Sather

Episode

58 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Investing, Fundraising & VC, Leadership

AI-Generated Summary

Published Jul 23, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓Screener Construction: Build a stock screener using these seven specific filters: long-term revenue growth above 6% annually, stock-based compensation below 10% of revenue, negative cash from financing (capital returned not raised), PE below 20, net debt-to-EBITDA below 3.5, ROIC above 15%, and five-year revenue CAGR above 6%. Exclude biotech and Chinese-listed companies to reduce risk exposure.
✓Price vs. Valuation Mindset: A stock trading at $181 with a 16.5 PE can be cheaper than a $25 stock with a PE of 12 carrying significant business risk. Dollar price per share is irrelevant to value — PE ratio, forward earnings expectations, and business quality determine whether a stock is genuinely cheap or merely low-priced.
✓Restaurant KPI — Comparable Sales: When evaluating restaurant stocks, prioritize comparable same-store sales growth over total revenue. Brinker International (ticker: EAT), parent of Chili's, grew comparable sales 25% year-over-year and 8% annually over five years — outpacing McDonald's typical 3-5% — while still trading at a 16.5 trailing PE and 15 forward PE.
✓Management Assessment for Turnarounds: When a company has a history of legal disputes, data breaches, or sustained net losses — as LendingTree experienced across four of six years post-2019 — the first research step is identifying whether leadership changed. Same management after repeated failures warrants rejection; new management requires verifying their prior track record before considering investment.
✓Moat Evaluation — Barriers to Entry: Every stock analysis requires explicitly assessing barriers to entry, not just current competitive position. High profits attract competition, so the question is whether existing moats — brand, network effects, switching costs — are sufficient to repel new entrants. This applies even to dominant platforms like DoorDash, where restaurants are building independent delivery apps to avoid margin erosion.

What It Covers

Hosts Stephen Morris and Andrew Sather run a live stock screener on fiscal.ai using seven filters — including ROIC above 15%, PE below 20, and negative cash from financing — then evaluate Yelp, LendingTree, Brinker International, Yeti Holdings, Zoetis, and CarGurus in real time without prior preparation.

Key Questions Answered

•Screener Construction: Build a stock screener using these seven specific filters: long-term revenue growth above 6% annually, stock-based compensation below 10% of revenue, negative cash from financing (capital returned not raised), PE below 20, net debt-to-EBITDA below 3.5, ROIC above 15%, and five-year revenue CAGR above 6%. Exclude biotech and Chinese-listed companies to reduce risk exposure.
•Price vs. Valuation Mindset: A stock trading at $181 with a 16.5 PE can be cheaper than a $25 stock with a PE of 12 carrying significant business risk. Dollar price per share is irrelevant to value — PE ratio, forward earnings expectations, and business quality determine whether a stock is genuinely cheap or merely low-priced.
•Restaurant KPI — Comparable Sales: When evaluating restaurant stocks, prioritize comparable same-store sales growth over total revenue. Brinker International (ticker: EAT), parent of Chili's, grew comparable sales 25% year-over-year and 8% annually over five years — outpacing McDonald's typical 3-5% — while still trading at a 16.5 trailing PE and 15 forward PE.
•Management Assessment for Turnarounds: When a company has a history of legal disputes, data breaches, or sustained net losses — as LendingTree experienced across four of six years post-2019 — the first research step is identifying whether leadership changed. Same management after repeated failures warrants rejection; new management requires verifying their prior track record before considering investment.
•Moat Evaluation — Barriers to Entry: Every stock analysis requires explicitly assessing barriers to entry, not just current competitive position. High profits attract competition, so the question is whether existing moats — brand, network effects, switching costs — are sufficient to repel new entrants. This applies even to dominant platforms like DoorDash, where restaurants are building independent delivery apps to avoid margin erosion.

Notable Moment

Brinker International's financials stunned both hosts — a legacy casual dining brand most associated with decades-old commercials posted 25% comparable sales growth in a single year, a figure that surpasses most fast-growing restaurant chains, prompting one host to clear his entire next day's schedule for a deep-dive analysis.

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Episode Transcript

Today, we're gonna do something a little bit different. We're going to be pulling up a stock screener, and we're going to walk through the companies that show up in the stock screener. And this isn't like a slam dunk. This isn't we're trying to pump these companies by any stretch of the imagination. I don't even know what companies are on it. It's more about we just wanna practice how we think and how we communicate and how we how we go about evaluating these companies because you always have to remember the screener isn't the answer. It's the starting point. So buckle up. This is gonna be fun. Here we go. Okay. So it's time for some real talk. I have a serious problem with shoes, like legitimate, like my wife has opinions about it type of a problem. So when I find a pair of shoes that I absolutely love and they're 3 or $400, I don't just buy them outright. I always try to find them cheaper first, you know, to keep my wife happy. That's exactly what dupe.com is for. It's an AI powered shopping tool that finds cheaper alternatives to the expensive stuff that we wanna buy. Not knock offs. They're not counterfeits. They're the same manufacturers, just different branding and way lower prices. Let's be honest. The white label game is real, and dupe is blowing it out of the water. And their brand new research for me tool is next level. Just describe what you're looking for. Type something like running shoes for trail running under a $100 or workout gear that doesn't fall apart after three washes, and it pulls from real sources, cuts out all that sponsored garbage, and just tells you what to buy and why. Straight answers done. Be prepared to save yourself a ton of time and money. Just go to dupe.com. That's dupe.com, and tell it what you're looking to buy. That's dupe.com to finally feel confident about what to buy. One of the things about Bitcoin that's really surprised me is how much easier it is to transact with these days. I was always under the impression that using Bitcoin as payment was inefficient, expensive, and risky, but Cash App has made it easy. It seems like Cash App's been accepted by more and more merchants everywhere I look. It's usually a lot of small business owners like myself, and now many of them are starting to accept Bitcoin as payment. Bitcoin is often talked about as an investment, but it was built to be used. With Cash App, you can actually do that. Send Bitcoin instantly, pay at local Square businesses and accept it, or move it to your own wallet whenever you want. It works more like real money and less like something locked in an account. For a limited time, new customers can get 10 added to their balance. Just use code Cash App 10 when you sign up. And don't forget …

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fiscal.aiRecommended
“Hosts Stephen Morris and Andrew Sather run a live stock screener on fiscal.ai using seven filters — including ROIC above 15%, PE below 20, and negative cash from financing”
Dupe
“SPONSORS: Dupe, https://dupe.com”
Cash App
“SPONSORS: Cash App, https://cash.app”
Plink
“SPONSORS: Plink, https://plink.com”
Function Health
“SPONSORS: Function Health, https://functionhealth.com/beginners”
Shopify
“SPONSORS: Shopify, https://shopify.com/beginners”