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What it would cost to take over the entire firm (equity plus debt, less cash) per dollar of pre-interest, pre-tax, pre-depreciation operating earnings. Capital-structure-agnostic — directly comparable across heavily and lightly levered businesses, which a P/E can't do. The weakness: EBITDA ignores capex, so capital-intensive businesses look artificially cheap on this metric. Cross-check with EV/FCF when capex is meaningful.

Valuation expressed against the cash actually available to all capital providers after capex. Often more honest than EV/EBITDA when capital expenditure is meaningful relative to depreciation, because EBITDA ignores capex entirely while FCF reflects it. The cleanest single-number 'what would I pay to own this whole business?' valuation lens for capital-intensive firms.

Adjusts the numerator for debt and cash so heavily-levered or cash-rich companies become comparable on a revenue-multiple basis. Particularly useful for cross-industry valuation work where some firms run net cash and others carry meaningful debt loads. Same caveats as P/S: best read alongside gross margin to translate the multiple into expected steady-state earnings power.

The multiple equity analysts most commonly quote because it reflects expected earnings rather than the trailing window. Same caveats as trailing P/E plus one extra: the denominator depends on consensus estimates, which can be systematically optimistic going into a downturn or pessimistic at a cyclical trough. Worth cross-checking against trailing P/E and sell-side estimate trend.

Capital-structure-agnostic earnings yield. Pairs with Greenblatt ROC to compute the famous Magic Formula rank (the universe-rank of earnings yield plus universe-rank of return on capital). Pre-tax operating earnings divided by the full claim on the firm gives a cleaner cross-firm valuation comparison than P/E or earnings yield alone, because it strips out the distortions from leverage, cash, and tax structure.

An ABSOLUTE intrinsic-value signal, distinct from the relative multiples (PE, EV/EBITDA) which only compare a stock to its industry peers. Intrinsic value comes from the Residual Income Model: book value plus the present value of the residual income (earnings above a charge for the cost of equity) the firm is forecast to generate. This is the best-VALIDATED absolute value signal in the academic literature (Frankel & Lee 1998, replicated through 2026): the value-to-price ratio robustly predicts 1-3 year cross-sectional returns, survives every major factor model, and subsumes book-to-market. Because it is scored across the WHOLE universe (not within-industry), it complements the relative multiples rather than double-counting them. Pair it with a quality screen (Piotroski) to avoid value traps, and read the EPV decomposition to see whether a discount is unpriced earnings power or just speculative growth coming out of the price. One caveat: the model anchors on book equity, so for low-book, buyback-heavy, or asset-light firms (think Apple or Coca-Cola) book is a poor floor and the model can read durable franchises as wildly overvalued. Readings are clamped, and the metric is currently shadow-scored — shown for context, with zero weight in the fundamentals grade — pending validation.

How many dollars of share price the market is willing to pay for one dollar of trailing-twelve-month earnings. The universal valuation anchor for profitable companies — useful for cross-sector comparison and as a quick read on whether the market expects earnings growth, decline, or a quality re-rating. Sensitive to one-off items in the denominator (write-downs, tax holidays, share buybacks); pair with EV/EBITDA when capital structure or non-cash charges look noisy.

Useful when earnings are negative, noisy, or one-time-distorted (early-stage growth, restructurings, cyclical troughs). Works best within an industry, not across — gross margin profiles vary so wildly that 1x P/S for a software company means something completely different from 1x P/S for a grocery chain.

Divides the trailing P/E by the year-over-year EPS growth rate (in percentage points). Below 1.0 is conventionally read as 'cheap relative to growth'; above 2 implies the multiple is well ahead of recent growth. Sensitive to which growth window you choose and unstable when earnings cross zero — flips sign or explodes when prior EPS is negative.

Peter Lynch's adjustment to PEG: adds the dividend yield to the growth rate in the denominator so that mature dividend payers don't get unfairly punished by a low growth rate alone. Sweet spot is 1.0 (P/E equals growth plus yield); below 0.5 often signals a broken growth assumption rather than genuine value; above 2 is over-paying.

Sanity-check on earnings quality — a ratio of 1.0 means every dollar of GAAP earnings shows up as free cash flow. Persistently below 1.0 means working-capital build or capex is consuming earnings; persistently above 1.0 is unusual and may flag accounting conservatism (heavy non-cash charges) or a one-time release. Trend matters more than absolute level.

Free cash flow the business throws off, divided by what the market currently charges for the equity. Treats the equity claim as a perpetual stream of free cash. More honest than earnings yield because it reflects the cash actually available to shareholders after all reinvestment. Cyclicals can swing below zero in a downturn — read with the trailing-cycle range.

Pre-capex version of cash conversion: compares operating cash flow directly to net income, before subtracting capex. Numbers persistently below 1.0 suggest accruals are doing the work (revenue recognised before cash collected, or expenses deferred). Numbers above 1.0 are typically driven by D&A exceeding true economic depreciation — a mild positive sign but not always meaningful.

Measures how productive the actual operating capital base is, independent of capital structure. Strips out the effects of cash, leverage, and below-the-line items so you see the underlying economic engine. The benchmark is the firm's weighted-average cost of capital (WACC) — sustained ROIC above WACC creates value, sustained ROIC below WACC destroys it. The single most important profitability metric for long-term compounding.

The single best operations-quality metric. Negative CCC means the firm is funded by suppliers — the customer pays before the supplier needs to be paid (Apple, Costco, Amazon at scale). Long CCC ties up working capital and forces operating-loan dependence. Combines three sub-metrics: days inventory outstanding, days sales outstanding, days payable outstanding.

How long the average sale sits as a receivable before becoming cash. Earnings-quality flag: receivables growing faster than revenue is one of the cleanest tells for revenue recognition stretching — Beneish flagged exactly this pattern as a primary fraud indicator. Industry context matters: B2B / project businesses run longer DSO than retail, but the trend is more important than the level.

Direct cash income from holding the share. Stable dividend yield over time often signals capital discipline and predictable cash generation; abnormally high yield is frequently a warning that the dividend isn't covered by free cash flow and may be cut. Always read alongside payout ratio and FCF coverage.

Net income divided by market cap, expressed as a percent. Lets you compare equity earning power directly to bond yields: a 6% earnings yield is the equity-side analog to a 6% coupon, with the difference that earnings can grow (or contract) while a bond coupon is fixed. The standard 'is the equity risk-premium adequate?' framing.

Sustainability check on the dividend yield. Below 30% means the dividend has substantial room to grow; 30–60% is the conventional sweet spot for a mature payer; above 85% is stretched and frequently precedes a cut. REITs and utilities run higher than the broad market by design — REIT payouts above 80% are normal because the structure requires distributing most income.

Captures the full cash return to shareholders — dividends plus share repurchases, expressed as a percentage of market cap. Buyback-heavy issuers (Apple, Alphabet) hide their real cash return behind a low headline dividend yield; total shareholder yield surfaces it. Increasingly the right lens for evaluating capital-return quality, especially for tech-era large-caps that prefer buybacks to dividends.

Designed to buy oversold pullbacks within an established uptrend (price above the regime moving average). Uses a 2-period RSI rather than the standard 14 to make it hyper-responsive to short-term swings. The default exit_method is RSI-threshold based: hold while RSI(2) is below the configured exit threshold and exit when RSI(2) crosses above exit. The book-style SMA exit is also supported by setting exit_method=sma with exit_ma.

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

+1 = pullback-buy state active, -1 = pullback-short state active (symmetric rule in a down regime), 0 = flat.

CCI measures how far the current typical price ((H+L+C)/3) sits from its rolling SMA, normalized by the mean absolute deviation. Originally built for commodity cycles by Donald Lambert; widely used as a generic momentum / overbought-oversold gauge on any asset. CCI is unbounded but ±100 is the conventional 'normal range' edge — readings beyond that are interpreted as strong directional thrusts or stretched extremes depending on context.

+1 while CCI is below -100 (oversold); -1 while CCI is above +100 (overbought); 0 inside the ±100 band.

+1 = oversold (stretched below the typical-price mean, mean-reversion buy bias), -1 = overbought (stretched above), 0 = inside the ±100 band.

Compares price pivots against the MACD histogram (MACD line minus signal line) at those same bars. Bullish divergence: price makes a lower low, histogram makes a higher low — momentum is improving beneath the surface. Bearish divergence: price makes a higher high, histogram makes a lower high. Slower than the MACD signal cross but a richer confirmatory tell — the histogram captures momentum acceleration, not just direction.

+1 at the right-hand pivot of bullish divergence; -1 at right-hand pivot of bearish divergence; 0 otherwise.

+1 = bullish divergence, -1 = bearish divergence.

MFI is essentially RSI computed on (typical price × volume) instead of close alone, so high-volume bars push the oscillator harder than low-volume bars. It's 0-100 bounded and uses the same 20/80 OB-OS convention as a slower RSI. Because it folds in volume, MFI can flag distribution / accumulation underneath a flat price tape that RSI would miss.

+1 while MFI is below 20 (oversold); -1 while MFI is above 80 (overbought); 0 in between.

+1 = oversold (bullish, volume-weighted), -1 = overbought (bearish), 0 = mid-range.

When price prints a lower low while RSI prints a higher low at those same pivot bars, momentum is improving even though price is still falling — a classic bullish divergence that often precedes a reversal up. The bearish mirror fires when price makes a higher high but RSI prints a lower high, telegraphing exhausted upside. Divergences are confirmation tells rather than precise timing signals — best used as a 'something is changing under the surface' alert, not a trade trigger on their own.

+1 at the right-hand pivot of a (lower-low price, higher-low RSI) pair; -1 at the right-hand pivot of a (higher-high price, lower-high RSI) pair; 0 otherwise.

+1 = bullish divergence, -1 = bearish divergence, 0 = no divergence at this bar.

Bullish when %K crosses above %D while both lines are below the oversold threshold (typically 20); bearish when %K crosses below %D while both are above overbought (typically 80). Filters out mid-range stochastic crosses, which whipsaw in chop. Best used at well-defined ranges and at trend extremes.

+1 on bullish cross in oversold; -1 on bearish cross in overbought; 0 otherwise.

+1 = oversold bullish cross, -1 = overbought bearish cross.

Larry Williams' Ultimate Oscillator blends buying-pressure ratios over three lookbacks (7/14/28) into a single 0-100 reading, designed to reduce the false extremes that plague single-period oscillators. Below 30 is oversold and above 70 overbought. The signal flags time spent in those zones: oversold reads bullish (mean-reversion bounce bias), overbought reads bearish.

+1 while the Ultimate Oscillator is at or below the oversold threshold (default 30); -1 while it is at or above the overbought threshold (default 70); 0 in between.

+1 = oversold (bullish), -1 = overbought (bearish), 0 = oscillator mid-range.

Williams %R maps close-to-range position onto a -100 to 0 scale: -100 means the close is right at the lookback period's low (oversold), 0 means right at the period's high (overbought). The oscillator's interpretation mirrors RSI but the scale is inverted. Like other OB/OS oscillators, it works best as a tactical timing aid inside an already-established trend, not as a standalone reversal trigger in choppy markets.

+1 while %R is below -80 (oversold); -1 while %R is above -20 (overbought); 0 in between.

+1 = oversold (bullish), -1 = overbought (bearish), 0 = mid-range.

Reports whether the close sits within the configured proximity (default 1%) of the rolling 252-bar high or low. New-highs and new-lows are universally watched screening filters — momentum and breakout strategies start from here, and the broad market's new-high / new-low spread is a foundational breadth indicator.

+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.