For me, I don't use dcf, or make financial statement projections. I rarely read 10k's. I rarely do comps, if by "comps" Is meant a company compared to its peers. If "comps" means a company's results/metrics as compared to its own history, then yes, I do these type comps.
As far as systems, I'm all over the place - LTB&H, value propositions, spinoffs, reversion-to-means, dividend plays, insider buy plays, following pro fund manager buys. People who seem to have one system or methodology here that they stick with appear to do better than me. It seems like it anyway -g-.
After finding a stock to look at, my process to evaluate (to determine if a stock is a buy for me) usually takes maybe 10 minutes. Often to mitigate what I believe is risk of not knowing what I should know, I will consider making a buy for only a few shares (tracking position), and hope to learn more and gain confirming information as time passes. I try to have a "ruling reason' for any buy, such as "high dividend", "high roe/low p/e", "consistent revenue growth", "seems to meet someone else's criteria" (Buffett, some guys on this thread, some guys on other threads), "reversion to mean", "momentum". Keeping this in mind helps me because it tells me I should exit my position if the ruling reason does not hold up.
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For what it's worth: If you are intending to use this thread to buy value stocks mentioned here, please consider this: As moderator I'm trying to remain somewhat true to Ben Graham's ideas. Right now, it seems tough to find many stocks that meet his criteria; times and people's ideas about value have changed since Graham; etc. So sometime we or I get a little off-track. Anyway, over the years of discussing what value is, we (the people posting here historically and posting now) just cannot come to an agreement on what a "value" stock or a "value" buy is. I fall back on this: based on a non rigorous study I did here maybe 25 years ago (!), I found that if three or more people posted here that they bought a stock, that stock usually did "satisfactorily" within 18-24 months (not sure exactly/can't remember). Which made some sense in that if three people with likely three different viewpoints on what "value" is, decided the same stock was a value buy that met their different criteria that they had for "value", it likely would be a value stock that would do ok, as value stocks are supposed to do. |
