choosing a stock What to look for?

Choosing a stock is more than half success.Stock trading is a lucrative business and has the potential to yield far ahead of bank interest.
The best interest savings account from ally.com yields as good as .85% to .95%. It is possible to make atleast 8% per annum from stock trading which is far ahead of bank interest
SO, what should I look for while investing in stocks?
Though stock market is highly volatile and has no strict rules, we can follow some practices when analyzing a stock
1) Look for stock performance in same time last year. In stock analyst terms we need to look at Earnings per share aka EPS during same quarter of last year
2) Look for the competitor performance last year's quarter and this year- This helps us determine the position of stock in industry and the way it is expected to behave compared to its competitors
3) Look for stock 52-week range. If the gap is wide look for any legal issues, issues that caused the wildest swing- Mostly this happens in case of legal violation, litigation related to patent infringement etc
4) Check if the company has a website - It is a very minimal basic these days and look for details on their products, the behavior of this stock relevant to the niche - Say, biomedical stocks are the ones with highest risk and best returns