HWM Howmet Aerospace Inc.

Sanity-check on earnings quality. Persistently below 1 means working capital or capex is consuming earnings; persistently above 1 is unusual and may flag accounting conservatism or non-cash drags.

Easier to compare than operating_margin across firms with very different leverage / depreciation profiles. Software platforms commonly run above 30%; capital-light service businesses cluster around 20%.

End-to-end conversion ratio: of every dollar of revenue, how much falls through to genuine free cash flow available to capital providers? More honest than net margin because it accounts for capex needed to maintain the business.

Operating margin minus interest, tax, and below-the-line items. Useful but noisy because tax rate and debt service distort year-to-year comparability.

Capital-efficiency measure that ignores how the assets are financed. Useful for comparing within a sector but biased low for asset-heavy businesses (banks, utilities) and high for asset-light ones.

Headline profitability metric. High ROE compounds book value if the business can reinvest at the same return. Beware of buybacks artificially inflating ROE by shrinking the denominator.

Bottom-line growth on a per-share basis, capturing both operating progress and any net buyback effect. The denominator uses absolute prior EPS so a turnaround from negative to positive earnings reads with the conventional sign.

Strips out receivables and inventory, leaving only cash and equivalents over current liabilities. Stress-tests whether the business can meet obligations even if collections seize up.

Whether the company can cover near-term obligations from near-term assets. Below 1.0 doesn't mean insolvent (cash flow can cover the gap) but is worth a closer look.

How much the company funds itself with debt vs. equity. Higher leverage amplifies both returns and risks; the appropriate level varies wildly by industry.

Bond covenants are commonly written against this ratio. Above ~5x is high-yield territory; investment-grade industrials typically run below 3x. Negative net debt (more cash than debt) means the firm could pay off its bonds and still hold cash.

The acid-test variant of current ratio strips inventory from current assets, since inventory can be stale or written down before it becomes cash. Sweet spot 1.2x; below 0.5x signals liquidity stress, above 3x signals trapped working capital.

Earnings-quality flag. Receivables growing faster than revenue is one of the cleanest tells for revenue recognition stretching. Beneish-style.

DuPont productivity measure. Combined with margin it tells the asset-light vs asset-heavy story. Very high turnover in retail can flag stockouts — the metric reads best industry-relative.

Five-factor distress signal originally calibrated for US public manufacturers. Above 3.0 is the conventional 'safe' zone, 1.8-3.0 is the grey zone, below 1.8 historically associates with elevated bankruptcy risk.

Beneish (1999) calibrates eight financial-statement indices against a sample of known manipulators. M < -2.22 reads as unlikely manipulator; M >= -1.78 as likely manipulator; the gap is grey. Companion to Altman Z but for fraud risk rather than bankruptcy.

Richard Sloan's accruals-quality measure. Persistent positive accruals (NI exceeds OCF) tend to mean-revert via earnings disappointments. Large negative values are usually fine but can flag one-time working-capital releases or non-cash drags. Phase D-2 made this a target-window metric centred at zero.

Buys oversold pullbacks within an established uptrend (price above the 200-day SMA). Holds while RSI(2) is below an exit threshold; exits when RSI(2) crosses above 60.

+1 when price is above regime_ma and RSI(2) drops below oversold; held while inside the trade; back to 0 when RSI(2) crosses above exit.

+1 = pullback-buy state active, 0 = flat. Bear-side variant uses the symmetric short rule.

Fires on the bar where the MACD line (EMA12-EMA26) crosses through the signal line (EMA9 of MACD). Bullish when MACD crosses up through signal, bearish when it crosses down. Far more commonly used as a trade trigger than divergence (see macd_divergence for the slower confirmatory tell).

+1 on bullish cross (MACD crosses up through signal); -1 on bearish cross (MACD crosses down through signal); 0 otherwise.

+1 = bullish MACD-signal cross, -1 = bearish MACD-signal cross.

Reports whether the close sits within the configured proximity (default 2%) of the rolling 252-bar high or low. New-highs and new-lows are universally used screening filters; momentum and breakout strategies start from here.

+1 while close is within proximity of the 252-bar high; -1 while close is within proximity of the 252-bar low; 0 mid-range.

+1 = near 52-week high, -1 = near 52-week low, 0 = mid-range.

ADX (Average Directional Index) measures trend strength regardless of direction. Below ~20 historically associates with sideways/choppy markets unfavorable to trend strategies.

+1 while ADX is below the threshold (weak trend); 0 otherwise.

+1 = weak trend (chop) - typically a signal to disable trend strategies, not to trade direction.