Computers make stock screening easy - USATODAY.com

Q: Do you know any free websites where you can screen stocks based on their "forward" price-to-earnings ratio?

A: When investors go shopping for stocks to buy, they often look for investments that meet certain criteria. Poking through thousands of stocks one-by-one looking for those criteria would be brutal.

That's where computerized stock screening comes in. Stock-screening tools filter the universe of stocks for the criteria you request. You can build stock screens to look for stocks of companies with large piles of cash, for instance, or other business traits, such as an attractive valuation measured by price-to-earnings ratio...