What is CANSLIM?

CANSLIM is William O'Neil's seven-letter checklist for picking growth-stock leaders, drawn from his study of the biggest winning stocks going back to the 1950s: Current quarterly earnings, Annual earnings growth, New (product, management, or price high), Supply and demand (float and volume), Leader (relative strength versus laggards), Institutional sponsorship, and Market direction. It is a framework for screening candidates, not a mechanical buy signal on its own; each letter narrows the search, and stocks meeting most or all seven criteria before their biggest moves were the exception, not the norm, among all listed stocks in O'Neil's own research.

The seven letters split naturally into fundamentals (C, A), structural and technical factors (N, S, L), and two conditions about who else is involved (I) and what the overall market is doing (M). O'Neil was explicit that M mattered more than any individual letter: in his own words, you can be right about a stock on every other factor and still lose money if the general market is heading down, because three out of four stocks get pulled along with it.