Sunday, February 8, 2009

Definition of Fundamental Analysis

Forex Killer Autopilot - Why You Will Want It?
By Kay Riter

What is fundamental analysis? Hopefully you already know it has something to do with investing. Fundamental analysis is a way to analyze stocks.

You wouldn't take a job without first finding out the pay, benefits, if you need to work overtime, or what the working conditions are like, right? The reason why you get a job is to make money, but that doesn't mean you should work somewhere that you won't be happy.

When investing in stocks, you want to do the same thing. The sole purpose of buying stock is to make money, but if you don't do your research beforehand, you might end up losing money.

There are actually two basic forms of stock analysis, technical and fundamental. Technical involves the heavy use of charts, and fundamental analysis researches the fundamentals of a corporation. We will begin by looking further into financial statements. If you haven't taken any business or accounting classes and haven't started investing yet, you probably don't know what financial investing is.

A financial statement is a statement that lists the specifics of a companies money situation. There are 4 separate financial statements that a corporation has available which include the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Retained Earnings Statement, and Cash Flows Statement. You should be able to read and understand these before you begin investing.

The balance sheet lists out all the assets, liabilities, and equity of a company. The income statement shows the income for the company and where it came from. The cash flows statement details where the cash comes in and goes out, and the statement of retained earnings shows how much money will stay in the business after paying dividends.

The next piece of fundamental analysis is to look at management. In the past, have the decisions they've made improved the company and spurred growth? Do they give good plans for the future promising growth in the company with a good plan to get their? Management is a very important of part in every corporation and should not be overlooked.

You must look at the past and pair it with a corporations decisions for the future to determine if their stock is a good buy. You can't predict anything, but through fundamentally analyzing the corporation, you should get some idea of how well you think they will do later down the road. Research is critical for investing, and fundamental analysis is a great tool for researching stocks and other investments. - 21511

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