Three Steps to Becoming a Value Investor

By Malone Richards


Probably the most difficult component of becoming a value investor is doing the research to properly evaluate a company. You must determine that a company is fundamentally sound, that its financial statements are in top condition, and that it possesses a great competitive advantage over its competing firms. All of that analysis mandates that you go through annual reports for the company you are studying as well as its competition to help assess risk along with the company's potential future performance. As soon as all that is finished and you've made the decision that a company is in fact a good one to invest in, you will have to assess whether the latest share price is trading at a discount. If the stock price is not trading at a discount, then it will not make any sense to get the stock at a higher price. That would remove the reason for making an investment in the company considering its longer term growth is priced into the share price. Below are the tactics you should abide by:

The first step is filter out your stocks. The essential element to become a highly effective value investor is always to first screen out businesses that won't be a proper match and tend to be not good value investing securities. This may include things like removal companies without any revenue, very high debt-to-equity ratios, micro-cap stocks, companies whose return-on-equity is lower than 10%, and businesses without consistent positive free cash flow.

The good news is there are no cost tools available in the market which may help with your screening process a great number of brokerage companies also provide self-service screeners to members that really help narrow down the search for securities using conditions you end up picking.

Second you have a look at Annual Reports. After 90% of the companies have been completely screened out, you are able to begin taking a much deeper dive inside the company's fundamentals, looking into its competition, and consequently finding its opportunities for expansion. This is definitely the right time to perform your due diligence. Have a look at company's annual reports, much like the 10k report, look into its financial records, and assess its leadership and strategies with respect to growth. In the event you only desire to understand one report, make sure that it's the 10k report and you browse and comprehend it in its entirety. In the event the business model is just too confusing and you're less than clear about how the business makes its income, move on to a different company.

The third step is to determine the Intrinsic Stock Value. Possibly the roughest of computations is the appraisal of a stock dependant upon the long-run cash flow for the business. Establishing the intrinsic value of companies is tricky because you must make some assumptions about the future, which is often never a sure thing, and then there are cumbersome formulas that need to be calculated. Altering your assumptions makes it necessary that you have to recalculate the stock value.

With the help of tools similar to the Intrinsic Stock Value Calculator you could potentially complete Step 3 before getting to Step 2 to really get a swift decision on whether to move forward with taking part in further research on the company, nevertheless the numbers you put in the calculator will have to be based on sound judgment in conjunction with a analysis of the organization's fiscal reports. The growth rates have to be determined by reviewing the annual reports in addition to management's goals for the business.

If you find that the intrinsic value you calculated happens to be above the present share price once you have conducted all 3 steps, perhaps you might have discovered a great investment and are on the way to develop into a thriving value investor.




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