Learn
How I read a 10-K in under an hour, which multiples are actually informative, and the accounting red flags that matter more than any price chart.
Small-cap specialty insurers like AMSF report on loss ratios and reserve development, not just EPS. Reading the combined ratio correctly changes the analysis.
Accruals measure the gap between reported earnings and actual cash. Widening accruals is one of the most reliable red flags in financial analysis, Sloan's…
Edward Altman's 1968 discriminant model predicts bankruptcy within two years about 72% of the time at its distress threshold.
Balance sheet changes lead income statements by 2-6 quarters. Net debt, receivables days, and goodwill are the lines that move stocks first.
Operating cash flow is cleaner than net income but still not distributable cash. The waterfall makes every deduction visible, SBC, working capital, capex …
Each stock has an earnings personality. Twelve quarters of per-ticker history reveals beat-miss cadence and drift patterns that aggregate statistics mask.
EV/Revenue survives where P/E breaks, but needs a growth bridge. Pre-profit software mid-cycle runs 0.2-0.4x growth-adjusted, how to avoid the reading traps.
FCF yield answers the most basic question in equity investing: if I buy this company today, how much cash does it throw off per dollar?
A single quarter's balance sheet hides the trajectory. A company can look fine today while quietly levering up 3 turns over 5 years, or sitting on a growing…
A consensus long can become a forced unwind in a week. The Crowding card measures fund-ownership overlap, short interest, and factor exposure so you can see…
EPV asks what a company is worth assuming zero growth, forever. The gap between EPV and market cap is the growth premium.
Every third-party analysis loses information. Diffing new SEC risk factors vs. the prior year filing is the highest-leverage research activity for any investor.
A DCF prints one number; the truth is a distribution. Swinging WACC by 100 bps and terminal growth by 50 bps routinely moves the output by 40-70%.
Federal obligations are public within days via USAspending and typically flow to the issuer 2–4 quarters before appearing in a 10-Q.
Press releases report two numbers. The full P&L is where you find restructuring charges pushed below the line, segment reclassifications that change…
A waterfall chart makes margin composition visible at a glance. How to separate durable margin expansion from a pull-forward that breaks within 18 months.
Naive PEG ignores growth quality and buyback distortions. The fix: use 3-5 year organic EPS CAGR and compare only within a profit-consistent peer group.
Piotroski's 9 tests filter the value quintile for fundamental improvement. F-scores of 8-9 produced a 72% forward win rate; scores of 0-3 produced only 15%.
Reverse DCF yields one testable implied growth rate you compare to realized history and peer comps to judge whether a stock price is stretched or reasonable.
The Rule of 40 collapses growth and profitability into a single number that should exceed 40 for a durable SaaS business.
A structured approach to earnings season: how to prepare, what metrics matter on the call, and how to interpret post-earnings price action.
When discounted cash flow analysis works, when relative multiples are better, and the pitfalls that trip up both approaches.
Learn what the P/E ratio means, how to interpret it, and when it can mislead you. Includes sector comparisons and practical examples.
A practical guide to REIT-specific valuation metrics, including FFO, AFFO, NAV, and the cap rate framework that replaces traditional equity analysis.
The financial metrics that separate winning tech investments from hype-driven traps, with frameworks for evaluating SaaS, hardware, and platform businesses.
Why the market's reaction to earnings reports depends on guidance, positioning, and expectations far more than the headline EPS number.
How to use price-to-sales ratio to value high-growth companies that are not yet profitable, and the traps that make this metric dangerous.
Why corporate insiders buying their own stock is one of the most reliable bullish signals in equity analysis, and how to separate meaningful purchases from…
Why chasing the highest dividend yields is one of the most common mistakes income investors make, and how to identify sustainable dividends.
Price-to-book works for banks and asset-heavy industrials but misleads for software. Here is how to apply it correctly by sector and when to skip it.
Why the source and sustainability of revenue growth matters more than the headline number, and how to distinguish organic growth from accounting illusions.
Why gross margin is one of the strongest signals of competitive advantage, how to interpret it by sector, and what margin trends reveal about business quality.
How to use ROE to identify high-quality businesses, why the DuPont decomposition matters, and the leverage trap that inflates the metric.
Earnings can be managed. Cash flow cannot. How to use free cash flow to evaluate business quality and avoid accounting illusions.
Why enterprise value to EBITDA is the preferred valuation metric on Wall Street, how to calculate it, and when it gives a clearer picture than P/E.
A 15-minute pre-earnings checklist covering guidance revisions, balance sheet flags, and estimate dispersion using Alphactor tools: no deep-dive report needed.