16 July 2026 Screener
Bottom line
No new candidates cleared the 7/10 conviction bar today. Zero actionable ideas — the screen keeps its discipline rather than forcing a list. Four names now sit at 3+ appearances (technically “high-conviction on repetition”) but remain below the conviction bar, so none are presented as actionable. Full detail below.
1. Universe & trough screen
Rebuilt from scratch: S&P 500 (501 symbols) + Nasdaq-100 (102 symbols) + the Nokia/Ericsson non-US watchlist, deduped to roughly 511 names, with the 9-ticker avoid/crypto exclude list dropped immediately (PLTR, ANET, ARM, VRT, CRDO, ACMR, SMCI, COIN, MSTR). Screened via parallel batch-quote pulls across the full universe, market-cap floor of $10B applied.
Trough band (≥40% off 52-week/all-time high) — 33 names, essentially stable across both runs today: ACN, ADBE, ALB, ALNY, BR, BSX, CHTR, CPRT, CRWV, CSGP, CTSH, FIS, FISV, GDDY, INTU, LDOS, LEN, LULU, NFLX, NKE, NOW, ORCL, PNR (new arrival), PODD, PSKY, PTC, RKLB, TRI, TRMB, TSCO, TYL, WDAY, ZTS.
The only real change during the day: PYPL exited the band, rallying to $56.03 (-29.5% off high) on confirmed takeover news (see section 3). A second-run subagent sweep briefly (and incorrectly) dropped six of these tickers from its output; a direct batch-quote reconciliation confirmed all six (INTU, LULU, NOW, PODD, LDOS, FISV) remain genuinely deep in the trough band — flagged as a process bug to harden next run, not a real market move.
Ticker-sanity exclusion: SPCX (SpaceX, newly IPO’d, now in the S&P 500) screened at roughly 40% off its recent high but was excluded — under two months of trading history can’t support the five-year quality/valuation framework this screen requires. Revisit once it has a longer track record.
2. Full diligence: PNR (Pentair) — new arrival
Conviction: 3.5/10 — Watchlist, not actionable.
Trailing quality looks fine (FCF per share grew from $3.29 to $4.55 over 2023-2025, roughly 40% gross margin, 12.3x interest coverage), and Pentair has a real niche moat in water-treatment and pool-equipment brands (peer group: Donaldson, IDEX, ITT, Graco, Nordson).
But this is a live, 48-hour-old shock, not a settled discount. On July 14 Pentair preliminarily missed Q2 sales guidance by roughly 17%, cut FY2026 guidance from growth to a 4-7% revenue decline, and its CFO resigned after only four months — root cause cited as pool-equipment channel destocking “far deeper than anticipated.”
Political/policy overlay: insider activity is routine pre-crash RSU dispositions only, no open-market buying since the crash; one immaterial pre-crash Senate purchase. No smart-money confirmation of a bottom.
Real Q2 print due July 28 is the actual test.
3. Biggest news of the day: PayPal (PYPL) takeover offer — CONFIRMED
Stripe and private-equity firm Advent International (with Block contributing to the equity) made a joint offer to acquire PayPal for $60.50 per share (roughly $53.4B total, a 28% premium), first reported by Reuters on July 15 and corroborated by CNBC, WSJ, TechCrunch, and Bloomberg. PayPal is working with Goldman Sachs and Evercore; the board is expected to meet on the offer as soon as July 20. BofA moved to No Rating; William Blair and BTIG are both publicly “hesitant to chase.”
PYPL now trades at $56.03, roughly an 8% discount to the offer price — reflecting genuine deal risk (no signed agreement yet, plausible antitrust scrutiny given the combined entity would process roughly $3.7T in annual payment volume).
This flips PYPL out of scope for this framework. It was originally screened as a “quality business at a temporary discount” (1st appearance, July 10, Watchlist). It’s now a binary merger-arbitrage situation — not a fit for the durable-business-discount thesis this screen is built to find. Logged with 2 appearances but explicitly not presented as an MU-pattern idea.
4. Abbott (ABT) — earnings beat-and-raise
Abbott reported Q2 2026 results this morning: comparable sales up 4.8%, adjusted EPS of $1.31, and it raised full-year EPS guidance to $5.45-5.60 (from $5.38-5.58), citing heart-device strength. Stock was up 6.7% on the day to $95.32, still about 31% off its 52-week high.
ABT was already flagged (July 14) as a valuation-screen-only pass (P/S roughly 26% below its 5-year average) awaiting full diligence. Today’s beat is real, positive, dated business evidence — now at 2 appearances (Elevated), and the strongest case yet to prioritize its full quality/moat/catalyst diligence next run.
5. Mandatory 5-year valuation-history checks (10 names checked today across both runs)
This check catches names trading cheap relative to their own history even if they haven’t dropped 40% in price.
Cleared, and added as new Watchlist candidates not yet fully diligenced: ISRG (Intuitive Surgical) is roughly 29% below its 5-year average on both P/S and EV/Sales, with a non-monotonic history suggesting a genuine dislocation. VEEV (Veeva Systems) is about 26% below its 5-year average EV/Sales — a life-sciences CRM business with high switching costs. ADSK (Autodesk) is about 26% below its 5-year average EV/Sales, with a sharp recent drop after several stable years.
Checked but did not clear: QCOM, IBM, and FICO are all roughly in line with their own history. GLW is actually well above its own 5-year average (an AI/optics-driven re-rating, not a discount). SYK and CME both came up short — SYK’s discount was only about 4%, and CME is actually trading slightly above its own average.
ROP (Roper Technologies) nominally cleared the raw threshold (about 26% below average) but its 5-year multiple history is a steady, mostly-monotonic decline from roughly 12x to 7x — that reads as secular de-rating, not a genuine dislocation, and it was excluded on the same basis previously applied to MDT and AMT.
Diligence backlog now queued for next run: MSFT, ISRG, AMT, VEEV, and ADSK are all valuation-screen-only passes awaiting full quality/moat/catalyst diligence — five names deep, and should be worked down before adding more.
6. Escalation status (persistence log)
No ticker crossed into actionable territory (7/10+) today. Status changes:
PYPL moved from 1 to 2 appearances (Elevated, but flagged as out-of-framework scope — see section 3) on the confirmed takeover offer.
ABT moved from 1 to 2 appearances (Elevated) on the earnings beat-and-raise.
VEEV and ADSK are new entries (1 appearance, Watchlist) after clearing the valuation-history check.
ALNY, CHTR, and WDAY remain at 2 appearances (Elevated), unchanged today, carried from this morning’s run.
CSGP, INTU, and TRI remain at 3 appearances (High-conviction on repetition only, not actionable) — conviction stays below 7/10 despite repeated appearances, the same pattern as NFLX.
NFLX remains the single most important open item: Q2 2026 earnings, released after market close today (around 4:01pm ET), were still pending as of both runs. NFLX sits at 3 appearances/high-conviction-on-repetition but only 6/10 conviction — a strong beat could be the first name to cross both the repetition and conviction thresholds simultaneously; a miss likely extends the holding pattern.
7. On ServiceNow (NOW) specifically
NOW remains in the trough band (around $102, roughly 51% off its $210 high) but nothing changed on it in either run today. Quality and moat both pass — revenue up 21% year over year, $4.59B in free cash flow, net cash position, and cRPO growing 22.5% year over year. The counter-case: even after the drawdown it still trades around 12x EV/sales and 35x EV/FCF, priced for continued premium growth rather than reflecting a genuine distressed discount.
A follow-up check today found NOW is trading at an EV/Sales of roughly 11.9x versus a 5-year average of about 16.1x — a real 26% discount to its own history, and the multiple swung around non-monotonically over that period rather than steadily grinding down, which reads as a genuine dislocation. That’s a real point in favor.
What’s still missing: no open-market insider buying — every recent Form 4 filing is either an RSU grant or a routine tax-withholding sale, nobody on the inside is spending their own money at these prices. Wall Street coverage is already a consensus Buy (59 buy, 9 hold, 1 sell) with a price target around $143, about 40% above the current price — which isn’t disqualifying, but it does mean the case rests less on “the market is wrong to be pessimistic” and more on “the business needs to deliver on the growth the Street already expects.” Worth tracking whether that gap closes or those targets get cut over the next couple of prints.
Status: 1 appearance, Watchlist, not yet actionable.
This is research and screening output only — not a trade instruction. Please do your own diligence before acting on anything above.