Three quick screening scores on the Fundamentals card. Quality reflects how profitable a company is, Growth how fast its sales and earnings are growing, Value how cheap it looks on earnings. Each is color-coded green when strong, red when weak — simple heuristic screens, not the quantum forecast and not probabilities.
Quality Score — how profitable the company is. It blends return on equity (profit earned on shareholders’ money) and profit margin (share of each sales dollar kept). Higher is better; roughly green in the low-20s, red in single digits. It says nothing about debt.
Growth Score — how fast it is growing. It blends recent revenue and earnings growth. Higher is faster; green around the low double digits, red once negative (shrinking). Backward-looking and can be lumpy year to year.
Value Score — how cheap it looks on earnings. Based on the P/E ratio, flipped so a lower P/E scores higher. A high Value Score means the stock is cheap relative to earnings (very roughly, a P/E under about 30 scores green). Cheap is not automatically good.
The three often pull in opposite directions, and that tension is the useful part. A wonderful business (high Quality, high Growth) is usually expensive, so its Value Score is low. A very high Value Score can mean the market expects trouble — the classic value trap. Use the trio to see the trade-off a stock offers, not to pick a winner from any single number.
They are a fast fundamental sanity check, not a verdict: not the quantum forecast (the BUY / WAIT / AVOID call comes from the forecast and its safety gates), not probabilities (a Quality Score of 25 is not “a 25% chance”), not sector-adjusted, and backward-looking. Read them as a first look at the business behind the forecast, then confirm with expected growth and the ticker’s own verdict.
Not always. A high Value Score means a low P/E — cheap relative to earnings — but a stock can be cheap because the market expects trouble ahead (a value trap). Read it alongside Quality and Growth.
No. They are simple heuristic screens built from public financial ratios, not the quantum forecast. The headline verdict comes from the forecast and its safety gates, and none of the three is a probability.
High-quality, fast-growing companies are usually expensive: investors pay a premium, which shows up as a high P/E and therefore a low Value Score. The three scores are meant to be read together.
Browse all S&P 500 tickers to see this metric applied to individual companies.
Educational research only — not investment advice.