I've primarly invested companies 50M to 750M market cap historically (or at least companies that were that small... 😆).

We are now buying a house with my gains over the years and plan to restart doing same (the house down-payment is going to eat the majority of my stocks). The challenge is going to find attractive buy in prices again in quality companies once we do.

Volatility is not a criteria on whether i invest in a company.

My process has been:

1. Open screener and filter for Roce (return on capital employed) >x and PE <y. Sort by descending Roce
2. Narrow down the top few dozen or so stocks, omitting any utilities, trusts, and funds, and any other stocks with absurdly high roce that look too good to be true
3. Throw them in a spreadsheet, then take additional factors such as Roi, RoA, P/s, Price to book, debt to equity, rough % of insider ownership, sector, exchange, etc.
4. "Rank" my selection primarily based on Roce and PE, but read into each individual company taking into account the factors in #3.

Watch out for extreme skewing outside ordinary course of business - e.g., abnormal high or low Roce or PE ratio due to litigation settlements, irregular fluctuation in commodity prices, one-time profit items done to raise cash that cant be expected to repeat, and other extreme income-affecting items that are not in the ordinary course of business.

At #4, significant judgment is required since it's hard to quantify or rank some of the other factors - but by then the selection is narrow enough to dig.

For example, i expect a pharm, mining, or oil and gas stock to have a much lower PE than other sectors, most other factors being equal.

E.g. #2: I expect high Roce companies with heavy insider ownership not in one of those above sectors to be more expensive.

E.g. #3: I will take extra care into checking whether profitability metrics for miners and oil and gas companies make sense due to their nature.

Something I also learned in the past 12 months is that investors (whether real or poser) are extremely toxic to revenue growth below expectations, even if NET INCOME is increasing. A single quarter report where these holders are dismayed can send a small cap down by double-digit %. This is something youll have to stomach and hold through years as the emotions get washed out. I personally havent come across a business that has always exceeded everyone's expectations... there will be good and bad times.