The Financial Post reports in its Saturday edition that stock screening can often provide some great investment ideas, and highlight some stocks you may have never heard of. Post columnist Peter Hodson cautions, however, that stock screening does have some disadvantages: The data output is only as good as the data input. Mr. Hodson uses Bloomberg for his screens, which he says is generally very accurate, but is not perfect. In terms of valuation and growth, Mr. Hodson says there are many cheap stocks out there, and there are many growth stocks. Generally, high growth comes at a cost of higher valuation. So, the fund manager screens to see a list of companies that are cheap, and still are showing growth. For the growth screen, he uses earnings growth (one year per share) of more than 30 per cent; for valuation, price-to-earnings of less than 10. He added a $400-million market cap but no other criteria, such as debt or cash flow: The only concern here is growth. Mr. Hodson found 13 companies, but many were energy stocks, so he took those out. The remainder were: Chorus Aviation, Enerflex and Canaccord Genuity.