15 investing tips

1. Business model
2. CEO, Management Team & Leadership
3. Future Growth Potential
4. Institutional Sponsorship
5. Financial Health
6. Earnings/ Revenue History
7. Insider Trading
8. Valuations
9. Recent News
10. Peers, Competition & Competitive Landscape
11. Price Upside, Price Targets & Analysts Ratings
12. Amount of Index Funds that hold this Stock
13. Social Sentiment
14. Average Volume
15. Short Selling & Put/Call ratio

1. Understand the business model & how they will make money. Know:

• What they do
• How they make money
• Why are they important
• Their products
• MOAT/ Strengths/ Positives/ Advantages
• Opportunities/ Growth/ Catalysts
• Downside/ Negatives/ Weaknesses/ Threats/ Risks

2. CEO, Management Team & Leadership:

• Check Glassdoor & Indeed to learn about the management
• Google the CEO (A CEO with low/ bad ratings is a bad sign)
• Look into the LinkedIn profiles or management
• Look at the 10-K annual report for the bio’s of executive management

3. Future Growth Potential:

• Look at past growth trends in financials
• Look at recent news, 10Q’s, 10Ks, investor presentations, and statements to look for future growth news
• Know about new products, or a changing landscape • Will the company scale?

4. Institutional Sponsorship:

• Are big banks and hedge funds buying or holding?
• How much of this company’s stock is held by institutions?
• Are Wall St. institutions increasing or decreasing their position?

5. Financial health:

• Growing Balance Sheet & Income Statement
• Growth in revenue, net income, EPS & profit margins
• Quick ratio > 2 to sustain operations
• Positive cash flows from operations
• Healthy Investing & Financing Cashflows

6. Earnings & revenue history. Look at financials and projections:

• Was there growth?
• Is there growth potential?
• Have they missed earnings?
• Have they beat earnings?
• Has earnings remained flat or grew consistently?

7. Insider Trading:

• Is the CEO buying or selling shares?
• Is management buying or selling shares?

8. Valuations

• Overvalued or Undervalued?
• How do valuations compare to peers & competitors in the industry?
• Look at R/E ratio, PEG ratio, P/S ratio, P/CF ratio

9. Recent News. Google the company and look at recent articles:

• Is recent news good or bad?
• What are people on social media saying?
• What are news outlets saying?
• What are bloggers saying?
• Reasons for recent movement in recent stock price?

10. Peers, competition & competitive landscape:

• How does this company stack up against its competitors & peers?
• How do the financials compare?
• How to the products compare?
• Is there a MOAT?
• Strengths & advantages over peers/ competitors?

11. Price upside, price targets & analysts rating consensus:

• What do the analysts covering the stock think it’s worth
• What do the analysts covering it, have to say about the price targets?
• What is the bull case of the analysts covering this stock?

12. How many index funds own this stock? (Will they continue to buy each month?)
13. Social sentiment (Check what people are saying on social media, check google search trends)
14. Average volume traded (How liquid is the stock? How large/small are the bid/ask spreads?)

15. Short selling & put/call ratio?

• How much of this stock is sold short?
• Are people betting against this company? If so, why are they?