My team and I do our best to show you investment opportunities with the greatest chance to help you grow your retirement savings.

And as I mentioned in yesterday's alert, the best investments right now are in value stocks.

These stocks may have been boring to some investors in years past.

But as more capital moves into safe areas of the market, I expect to see value stocks trade steadily higher. 

And if you're invested in these names, you'll be able to continue to grow your wealth while other investors struggle to keep up.

I promise to work hard to bring you the best value names on my radar. But today, I wanted to do something a bit different…

Instead of telling you which stocks to buy, I want to show you how to look through a list of stocks to pick out the best value for your investments.

Let's get started!

Transparency Leads to a World of Information

Over the last several years, regulators have pushed for markets to be more transparent and accessible to individual investors.

I love the way many of these regulations have helped level the playing field and give individual investors like you and me a fair shot.

Today, you can find a tremendous amount of information about the market and individual stocks. And it's available at no cost!

You just have to know where to find it and how to use this information. After today's alert, you'll have a head start on both of these objectives.

To start, I'd like you to get familiar with two free websites: Finviz and Yahoo Finance. (Yes, I know Yahoo may be a stale website from the past. But its financial outlet is incredibly useful!)

While my team and I pay for many different research services, I find myself using these two free websites just about every day.

So please bookmark them both and start getting acquainted with their menus and features.

Understanding the Value of a Stock

When you buy a stock, what are you really paying for? And how do you know if you're getting a good deal?

The traditional way to value a stock is to look at how much profit per share a company expects to earn. Then compare the current stock price to the profits per share.

The question we're asking here is "how much am I paying for every dollar of profit I buy?"

Let’s look at Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) as an example.

Below is a screenshot from Yahoo Finance. To get to this page, I put MSFT in the ticker box and then I clicked the "analysis" button you can see at the top right.

The important numbers in this table are the $9.32 per share MSFT is expected to earn this year and the $10.78 expected for next year.

To find the value of shares of MSFT, simply take the stock price ($282 at the time I pulled this screenshot) and divide it by the expected earnings for the current year. 

The answer in this case works out to be $30.25.

In other words, you’re paying $30.25 for every dollar in profit Microsoft expects to earn this year.

That's a bit of a steep price. The only reason investors are willing to pay that much is because Microsoft has a long track record of growing its annual profits.

Other stocks that can give you more value for every dollar invested include:

• Pfizer Inc. (PFE) trading at 6.7 times profits
• BP p.l.c. (BP) trading at 5.4 times profits
• or even Cisco Systems (CSCO) trading at 14.5 times profits.

Paying less for every dollar of profits a company generates can help you to lock in better returns as those profits accumulate. 

And it can also help protect your capital because many value stocks are less likely to trade lower since they're already cheap.

Screening for Value Stocks

If you want to get a list of stocks trading at low price-to-earnings values, the site Finviz can save you a lot of time.

I often start by looking up a particular sector like oil and gas companies, which are in favor right now.

So today, I typed "BP" into the Finviz ticker box at the top left of the site. Here's a screenshot of what came up. (Notice that I've circled the sector at the bottom.)

Once I click on the sector link, Finviz gives me a table of all stocks in this sector. 

Then I can then click on the "P/E" column to sort the entire list by price-to-earnings (P/E) putting the deepest value stocks at the top of the list.

You can also see that there are several other filters and headings you can use to refine your search.

Now, just because a stock trades at a deep value, that doesn't mean it's necessarily a buy.

In many cases, there’s a reason why a stock is so cheap. It could be that the company's profits are expected to decline in the future or other risks are in play.

You should still do your homework on any stock you decide to invest in. But these free tools can help you get started finding great values in today's market. 

And they can save you a lot of time, helping you get to the fun part of looking more deeply into what a company does and why it is (or isn't) a great deal.

I hope you love this process as much as I do.

To me, it's a lot of fun to spend time digging through these screens and data points to find the best opportunities — especially in today's more challenging market.

But if this type of analysis isn’t your thing, no worries!

My team and I will continue to pour through the information to find the best investment plays to help you grow and protect your wealth.

Here's to living a Rich Retirement!

Zach Scheidt
Editor, Rich Retirement Letter
RichRetirementFeedback@StPaulResearch.com