Just spent some time digging into a stock screening strategy that's been catching my attention lately. Most traders focus on finding cheap stocks with low valuations, but I've been looking at the flip side - stocks where the P/E ratio is actually climbing. What is P/E in stocks exactly? Basically it's the price-to-earnings ratio, showing how much investors are willing to pay for every dollar of company earnings. When this metric starts rising, it often signals that investors are getting more confident about future growth.

The interesting part is that rising P/E can sometimes indicate stronger upside potential than the traditional value play. If earnings are growing and the market is bidding up the price even more, it means confidence is building. I ran through a bunch of screening criteria - looking at EPS growth estimates, consistent price momentum across different timeframes, and volume levels. Narrowed things down from thousands of candidates to just a handful that really stood out.

Ended up spotting a few names that caught my eye: Comfort Systems USA in HVAC services, MasTec doing infrastructure work, Virgin Galactic in aerospace, AeroVironment with their tech solutions, and Blackbaud in cloud software. Each of these showed solid earnings surprises over the past year and consistent price strength. The key was finding that sweet spot where P/E is rising but not overextended - usually when price gains are 20% or more from a breakout point but haven't exploded over 100%.

What's wild is that historical data shows some stocks have seen their P/E ratios jump over 100% once they break out properly. So if you can catch them early in that cycle, the gains can be pretty substantial. The screening process itself is pretty systematic - checking that earnings growth is accelerating, volume is solid above 50k shares daily, and price momentum is consistent week to week. It's not about picking the cheapest stocks, it's about finding ones where the market is starting to recognize improving fundamentals. Might be worth testing this approach in your own portfolio if you haven't already looked at what is P/E in stocks and how rising ratios can signal opportunity.