What are the red stars and grey stars ?

The red stars indicate that a company passes Graham's qualitative filters : if the star is red, the criteria is OK. If the star is grey (), it's not. Each star relates to one of the 5 Graham's criterias :

Graham's qualitative filters	For conservative investors : one red star if...	For enterprising investors : one red star if...
Financial condition	current ratio is above 2 long term debt / current assets is under 1	current ratio must be above 1.5 long term debt / current assets must be under 1.1
	(Note that a company has to pass both current ratio and long term debt ratio tests to have one red star.)
Earnings stability	no losses in the past 10 years	no losses in the past 5 years
Dividends	15 years of dividends in the past 15 years	some dividends last year
Earnings growth	earnings growth above 33% in the past 10 years	Last year earnings above earnings 5 years ago
Valuation	P.E.R multiplied by Price/book ratio under 22.5	Price/book ratio under 1.20.

The stars are always presented in the same order : the first star from the left is for the financial condition criteria, the second one is for Earnings stability, and so on… you can see what is the filter for a star by rolling over the star with your mouse.

For example, a company with these stars :

- : this stock has a good financial situation, dividends, earnings growth and valuation ok, but has a problem with earnings stability indicating that the company may be weak at some stage of its cycle or that there has been hard time in the business that may well come again.

- : this stock is cheap in terms of valuation but there are probably good reasons for it...

- : this company seems to be attractive but does not pass the financial condition test : the reason may be because the business of the company does not require high current asset or can be financed by long term debt, but it could also be that the company is risky...

- : this company seems to be attractive but has a short dividend history (conservative investors) or no dividend last year (enterprising investors) ; dividend is often a good protection in bearish markets, and it shows a "friendly" behavior of managers towards shareholders... but some growth companies prefer to keep their results to finance their developpement.