Valuing Stocks

Valuing a stock is a lot like buying a car.

There are lots of great cars out there, but the sticker price may be more than the actual worth of the car.   Some manufacturers command a premium price because their cars have a certain cachet, not because their cars are necessarily more reliable or of better quality than others on the market.

It is the same thing with stocks.

Some stocks are valued much more richly than others because they are hot or popular with investors, not because the companies are more profitable or have better growth prospects,

The ability to decide whether a company's stock price accurately reflects its performance is the heart of stock valuation.

For traders: Always keep in mind that the company and its stocks are distinct

A company may reach new heights of prosperity while you as individual stockholder own a bit of it, but you still can lose money.  Why?  You and other temporary owners have bought merely rights to cash in on whatever changing level of perception other people (taken as a whole, the market) may hold about that company.

1.  They may like it less tomorrow

• because of buying in too late (too high), 
• because interest rates are rising (making all equities less attractive relative to bonds or Treasury bills); 
• because of adverse public opinion about its products or industry;
• because of press publicity over high executive salaries; 
• because general corporate reputation might deteriorate; 
• because investment tastes shift in favour of other industries; or 
• because of a rising fear of recession.

2.  Or the overall stock market may be declining from a too-high prior level.

3.  Other investors collectively may be right or wrong about the company over the short to medium term.  And you as an individual may prove correct, while the majority are incorrect, about fundamentals.


To determine whether now is the time to hold or to sell, focus on changes in perception rather than on long term fundamentals.  An investor can be dead-on right about fundamentals, but if the market collectively decides that it no longer is willing to pay as much for this company's reputation or earnings, its share price heads south.  Eventually, an individual's logic may be vindicated again as value reasserts itself and other investors resume their willingness to pay for it.  But in that interim, the individual is going to suffer a loss for fighting the tape.

As Benjamin Graham noted in The Intelligent Investor, markets act as voting machines in the short term but in the long run function as weighing machines.  Thus, actions and opinions of the crowd determine share price in the short to medium term, which is the most important factor because that share price determines whether you have a gain or a loss, and when.  So buy and sell not just on personal judgment of a company behind a stock but on your studied assessment of what other investors think of the company and how that thinking seems to change.  A great company can be a bad stock (for trading or investing) if bought at just any price without regard to reasonable value.

Prices on the tape reflect people's reactions and perceptions and beliefs translated into buying and selling decisions; they do not reflect the truth about a company's fundamentals.  So keep in mind that the company and its stock are distinct.  

Being able to keep a company and its stock strictly separate in your mind has become ever more critical in recent years.  Excellent companies may suffer single-quarter earnings shortfalls against analyst estimates or might even experience actual interim declines in earnings.  Such minor stumbles usually call down immediate and massive institutional selling.  While such selling may be vastly disproportionate to any long-term true fundamental meaning of the triggering event, it does signal a coming period of more cautious appraisal by major investors.

If you maintain the mental agility to view a stock as merely an opinion barometer because you have separated it from the company's fundamentals, you will be able to sell without costly hesitation.  Fail to differentiate a company and its stock in your mind and you will have great difficulty over separation and loyalty issues and will be less successful in your investment moves.  Unless you plan on holding forever, which will produce merely average or even sub-par returns, you need to buy and sell.

Swings in market psychology drive prices to fluctuate around true long-term value (if only the latter could ever be known accurately today!).  Another way of viewing these price swings is to think of them as changes in the consensus of esteem given to a company by all investors taken together.  When esteem runs up above reasonable valuation of fundamentals, price will eventually correct downward to redress that temporary mistake.  Above-average profits accrue to those who capture such positive differentials of esteem minus reality.  (Similarly, on the buying side of the equation, handsome profit opportunities can be captured when reality minus esteem is a positive number, meaning that the stock in more common terms is temporarily undervalued by the market of opinion.)

Short cuts for finding value

Companies and shares are worth the present value of the future cash they can generate for their owners.  This is a rather simple statement, and yet in practice, valuing companies is not so straightforward.

As the famous economist John Maynard Keynes put it, it's better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong, and the better bet is to stick to a few simple valuation tools.  Here are some ways to value companies or shares:

1.  Discount cash flow method.

2.  Asset-based valuation tools.

• Price/Book Value
• Graham's Net Current Asset approach

3.  Earnings-based valuation tools.

• PE ratio

4.  Cash flow-based valuation tools

• DY
• FCF Yield

These different valuation tools each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

• The price-to-book ratio tends to work best with low-quality businesses on steep discounts.  
• The PER tends to work best with high-quality growth companies.  
• The dividend yield and free cash flow yield tend to be suited to mature businesses generating steady returns.

But in every case, you'll probably get closest to the truth by looking at all the different measures.

Also, only invest in good quality businesses.

Graham Declines to Predict Earnings

In The Intelligent Investor, Graham evaluated the investment merit of several stocks, but not once did he predict earnings for those stocks. (On other occasions, however, he did venture to predict earnings.) For instance, at the conclusion of his analyses of ELTRA and Emhart stocks, he concluded, "We make no predictions about the future earnings performance. . ." 

That Graham, an eminent security analyst, should decline to predict earnings is intriguing. He obviously did not have much confidence in his ability to predict earnings - nor in others' predictions, especially long-term predictions. Sophisticated investors have always been aware of this difficulty. For instance, John Maynard Keynes, the brilliant British economist, more than a half-century ago emphasized the great difficulty involved in forecasting investment returns. In regard to this difficulty, Keynes said : "The outstanding fact is the extreme precariousness of the basis of knowledge on which our estimates of prospective yield have to be made. Our knowledge of the factors which will govern the yield of an investment some years hence is usually very slight and often negligible. If we speak frankly, we have to admit that our basis of knowledge for estimating the yield ten years hence of a railway, a copper mine, a textile factory, the goodwill of a patent medicine, an Atlantic liner, a building in the City of London amounts to little and sometimes to nothing; or even five years hence. In fact, those who seriously attempt to make such estimates are often so much in the minority that their behavior does not govern the market. "
Apparently because of such problems, Graham believed that the security valuation process is not very reliable. After discussing some problems valuing ALCOA, Graham said, "ALCOA is surely a representative industrial company of huge size. . .[it] supports to some degree, the doubts we expressed [earlier] as to the dependability of the appraisal process when applied to the typical industrial company." 

Because the appraisal process is unreliable, it is prudent to diversify one's investments. Perhaps it is enough, Graham thought, for an investor to be assured that he or she is getting good value, even if an accurate valuation is impossible. 

Finally, the inherent inaccuracy of this valuation process may explain Graham's observation that he had never ". . . seen dependable calculations made about common-stock values . . . that went beyond simple arithmetic or the most elementary algebra." In valuing stock, crude, simple calculations often are as good as you can do.

Understanding Fundamental Analysis

Understanding Fundamental Analysis

Understanding Fundamental Analysis (Part 2)

Understanding Fundamental Analysis (Part 3)

Understanding Fundamental Analysis (Part 4)

Understanding Fundamental Analysis (Part 5)

Understanding Fundamental Analysis (Part 6)

The Economy Is Not Always The Stock Market Driver

The Economy Is Not Always The Stock Market Driver

By Claus Vogt on March 17, 2010
In the long run, economic development and - especially - corporate earnings are the main drivers of stock market performance. But this relationship is very loose. It becomes tight only if your time horizon is measured in decades.

Shorter term, economic development and corporate earnings are often relatively inconsequential for the stock market. Why? Economic changes are superimposed by changes in the fundamental valuation of the stock market. That means investors’ perceptions and their willingness to pay for risk and income streams are unsteady. Over time, investors are paying very different prices for the same earnings or dividend streams.

Fundamental Valuations Are Fluctuating Wildly


Look at the following charts showing the S&P 500 since 1926, the Price-Earnings-Ratio (PER) and the Dividend Yield. As you can see, both fundamental ratios have been fluctuating wildly. The PER was as low as 7 and as high as 20-something.

During the stock market bubble of the late 1990s the PER even rose to more than 40. And during the past quarters the PER rose significantly higher. Obviously investors came to the conclusion that the dramatic slump in corporate earnings, especially in the financial sector, was an extreme outlier which should not be taken into account to value the stock market.

S&P 500 Index, Kurs-Gewinn-Verhältnis, Dividendenrendite, 1926 bis 2010

Source: www.decisionpoint.com

These severe fluctuations mean that dividends, earnings, and cash flows are fetching very different price tags in different times. A simple example may demonstrate my point: Suppose the PER is as low as 7 and the stock market index is at 100 points. Keep earnings constant, but let the PER rise to its upper range at 21. Now the index rises from 100 points to 300 points. Let’s go a step further to a bubble PER of 42. In this case, the index doubles to 600 points. Same index, same companies, same earnings, but very different Price-Earnings-Ratios lead to this bandwidth of 100 to 600 points. And this bandwidth has been a reality in the past 30 years!

This example makes clear how secondary the economic background and even corporate earnings are to analyze and evaluate the stock market. But there is one major exception to this rule: Recession.

You Better See Recessions Coming


Whenever a recession is in the offing, you have invaluable economic information at your hand. This information is extremely important for the stock market and for your investment strategy. Why? Every recession has been accompanied by a severe stock bear market. That’s why I constantly look at my leading economic indicators, which enabled me to predict the recessions of 2001 and 2007-2009.

Right now they do not yet forecast an imminent recession. Hence, in the current situation it is ideal to painstakingly analyze the latest economic data release du jour. It may be fun to do so for those inclined. But it doesn’t help you in forecasting the stock market. I rate this regular data release ballyhoo as noise you can easily ignore.

History tells us that the economy is vulnerable to a renewed and relatively swift turn for the worse.

That doesn’t mean I do not follow economic development. But I am only interested in deciding whether the incoming data is starting to point to the end of the current economic rebound or not. Everything else is inconsequential.

We are living in a post bubble world. And history tells us that the economy is vulnerable to a renewed and relatively swift turn for the worse in this environment. After all, this rebound is the result of massive governmental stimulus, bail outs and market manipulation by the Fed.

It follows that this rebound is dubious and fragile. But even in this scenario the leading economic indicators will pick up some deterioration before the next down wave gets started. Currently, they are doing nothing of the sort.

http://www.dailymarkets.com/stocks/2010/03/17/the-economy-is-not-always-the-stock-market-driver/