Mindless Stock Screeners are "Mindless" and dangerous

Almost every stock site, or financial page on any browser has a stock screener by which a reader can put in some qualifications, like yield desired, PE, Price, etc, and then get the stocks that meet those qualifications. Some time ago, I did a sort on high dividend yielding stocks---this is a very popular sort these days, since many banks and investment vehicles give very low rates of interest. For example, if a bank gives 1.50 % on the savings, if you had saved a million dollars over your lifetime...it would give you $15,000 per year to live on...So now that you know that, being the self reliant person that you are...and the assets you have available for retirement...do the math...ok..you see the problem. Anyway..I digress...After my sort I got a list of stocks, and royalty trusts that sported some very attractive yields...all over 10%. And I did buy several. Some months later I was reading in an investment magazine that this particular royalty trust was going to be going out of business in 2015, or in three years....yes it had been formed a hundred years ago when the old Great Northern Railway had been around, and indeed James J Hill had been one of the founders of the trust...but what the simple stock screener could not tell me was that it was dated for demise. So---just a word to the wise...check out the financial details on the company you are investing in, and the history of that company paying dividends, what coverage they have in terms of cash flow to pay the dividend...and what the prospects are going forward...sometimes the reason that the dividend is rising is that the stock price is plunging because of adverse market conditions for that industry....