Where to start to looking for a good stock?

There are no fixed rule to start to look for a good stock however I would advice the following:

1. In case of a foreign market (if you do not invest in India) look how good the country is doing economically, socially( because social unrest can damage your investment),politically etc etc. A good way to look into this is to use Porter's Diamond which analyses a country's competitiveness in terms of five important indicators:http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/global/diamond/

2.Watch the industry it is operating into,
a.how bad the competition is, how easy it is to enter the market, watch out suppliers and buyers capacity to negotate with companies and what are the subsitute that can be offered for the companies product/services.

3.Do a more intense economic analysis. Find out the government plan on investment,interest rates,steps to control inflation and unemployment,policies on divestment and deregulations,FDI etc.

4.A thorough analysis of company's business and finance is required at a later stage when all above steps gives no red signal. Find out whether company is having high P/E ratios/industry P/E ratio, Div%,Current share price/one years highest share price,P/BV ratio etc and if answer to any of those is yes, we need further investigation in the financial statement of the company, however it does not mean that one should not analyse the Financial Statement of the companies for a better understanding of the companies' financial health. I will explain in next blogs how to analyse financial statements under various accounting standards.
=P/BV ratio*(Current/52weeks highest price)*P/E of company
P/E of industry
The lower the ratios better the investment, however I would not consider a ratios bigger than 2 worth investing unless there are strong factors supporting the company's prospects of grwoth such industrial dominance,government plans and company's recent growth in the market which can not be taken into account by the ratios above.

5.Find out how company is performing in business as compared with the competitors and whether there is any legal cases,bank covenant,lack of supply of raw materials or other restrictive conditions against the company's ability to do the business optimally.

6.Find out if banks are still willing to give the finance for the company's business needs and whether company has been performing consistently well previosuly, if yes it will be a more reliable stock than one which does not perform consistently.