Q: Will the new Investools Rule #1 Search turn up companies that have solid moats? I thought I saw some commodities in there.
A: Moat, Meaning, Management and Margin of Safety still all need to be evaluated. The search as defined by Investools is trying to look for consistency. It's a beginning and gives us a starting point that is interesting to play with. The businesses that made the cut look quite good -- even the commodity businesses. (But remember that commodities don't have moats, and therefore don't pass the 4Ms.)
The search results are a starting point, whatever search you use. The idea is to reduce 14,000 possible businesses to a handful that you can really dig in on. This search gives us a different pile to dig through than other searches Investools has and is in the direction that we want to go.
