Patent ID: 7013291

Claim:
A method of searching a universe of financial instruments by performing n filter passes of said universe with a computer having a processor, a memory, a viewing screen and a computer input device, each said filter pass having a filter condition, said method comprising: configuring said computer based on a search procedure to perform steps comprising: (a) displaying on said viewing screen a plurality of filter criteria, at least one of said filter criteria being selectable by user operation of said computer input device as a proposed filter condition of an i th filter pass, where i is any integer from 1 to n, said proposed filter condition including (a) said at least one filter criteria selected by user operation of said computer input device and (b) all filter conditions for previously performed ones of said filter passes; (b) in response to a selection of said at least one filter criteria, filtering said universe of financial instruments based on said proposed filter condition to provide a proposed filter output; (c) displaying on said viewing screen a histogram based upon said proposed filter output, wherein said histogram includes an ordinate and an abscissa, one of which represents a number of financial instruments and the other of which represents frequency of occurrence categories of said financial instruments; (d) if said user makes an additional filter criteria selection to provide a modified proposed filter output, repeating steps (b) and (c) based on said modified proposed filter output, wherein said histogram is modified based on said modified proposed filter output; (e) executing said i th filter pass based on said proposed filter output or said modified proposed filter output in response to a run command generated by user operation of said computer input device; and (f) repeating steps (b), (c), (d) and (e) until the n th filter pass has been performed.