How to pick growth stocks

At a time when company managements are giving lower guidance of future growth rates in topline and bottomline, it makes it worthwhile to study companies projecting high growth rates. Such stocks have some inherent characteristics, which popularize them as growth stocks. But exactly what are these traits? Lets see the more important ones;
1.The basic assumption regarding growth stock investing is that these stocks, even in an economic downturn, come up with very high growth rates in earnings and EPS.
2.Such companies grow faster than their peer group. For example L&T is growing faster than companies mostly in the infrastructure group. In favorable business environments most companies show high growth rates. The key is which companies sustain these high growth rates even in adverse economic environments. Also whether these growth rates are sustainable.
3.These companies also show very high ROEs.
4.These companies have high PE multiples. This is because the investor is ready to pay a high price for each unit of the companies' earnings. Educomp Solutions is a good example.
Usually these multiples are greater than the multiples of the overall market.
5.These stocks have high retention rates and low dividend payout ratios.
6.These stocks are very risky and are volatile and have high betas. Areva T&D is a good example.7.The history of earnings growth is also very good