A Quote by Peter Lynch
If you can follow only one bit of data, follow the earnings - assuming the company in question has earnings. I subscribe to the crusty notion that sooner or later earnings make or break an investment in equities. What the stock price does today, tomorrow, or next week is only a distraction.
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Calculate a stock's price/earnings ratio yourself, using Graham's formula of current price divided by average earnings over the past three years.
It's nonsensical to derive a price/earnings ratio by dividing the known current price by unknown future earnings.
What we do is we test what works on Wall Street. And sometimes it is earnings momentum, and sometimes it's earnings surprises. Sometimes it's price-to-sales cash flow, and then we put together our stock selection models.
They get, you know, whatever they want from their earnings, and their earnings go into their own company.
A young financial writer once brought ridicule upon himself by stating that a certain company had nothing to commend it except excellent earnings. Well, there are companies whose earnings are excellent but whose stocks I would never recommend. In selecting investments, I attach prime importance to the men behind them. I'd rather buy brains and character than earnings. Earnings can be good one year and poor the next. But if you put your money into securities run by men combining conspicuous brains and unimpeachable character, the likelihood is that the financial results will prove satisfactory.
Accounting does not make corporate earnings or balance sheets more volatile. Accounting just increases the transparency of volatility in earnings.
It's an earnings-driven market. The big question is whether the flow of earnings can rescue the market from the twin dreadnoughts of higher oil and interest rates.
Approaches to determining stock values vary, but fundamentally, each company judging itself undervalued is saying that its future stream of earnings justifies a higher price than the stock market is willing to accord it.
I think there's an awful lot of twaddle and bullshit on EVA. The whole game is to turn retained earnings into more earnings. EVA has ideas about cost of capital that make no sense. Of course, if a company generates high returns on capital and can maintain this over time, it will do well. But the mental system as a whole does not work.
The only way an established enterprise can dramatically increase its stock price is by adding a net new high-growth earnings engine to its existing portfolio.
Being captive to quarterly earnings isn't consistent with long-term value creation. This pressure and the short term focus of equity markets make it difficult for a public company to invest for long-term success, and tend to force company leaders to sacrifice long-term results to protect current earnings.
Most look at earnings and earnings potential, well I can't get into that game.
My goal is to buy a company at a low multiple to normal earnings power several years out and that the company earns good returns on capital at that level of normal earnings. A holding period of more than one year also works quite well as the factors are persistent in years 2 and 3.
Going public today is fraught with peril on many levels. One is earnings guidance. If you miss guidance, the stock price becomes very volatile. Short sellers can put a tremendous downward pressure on the stock.
Investors have been too willing to buy stocks with strong reported earnings, even if they do not understand how the earnings are produced.
Real investment risk is measured not by the percent that a stock may decline in price in relation to the general market in a given period, but by the danger of a loss of quality and earnings power through economic changes or deterioration in management.
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