Valuation, pricing, and analysis of securities
Pricing would just be another way to describe valuation. I guess if you want to get technical, pricing - is the act of getting somethings valuation. While valuation - is the estimate of somethings worth. Security analysis -  An examination and evaluation of the various factors affecting the value of a security. Side Note: While pricing is valuation, price is not. Price is how much the stock, or security costs most commonly determined by a market. Add On: The meaning of two words might matter depending on what context it is being used in. For example if we were talking about a market where an individual actually sets a price at random without doing any type of evaluation then this->answer that AlexR provides would better highlight the differences. "I would differentiate between pricing and valuation a bit more:  Valuation is the result of investment analysis and the result of coming up with a fair value for a company and its shares; this is done usually by equity analysts. I have never heard about pricing a security in this context. Pricing would indicate that the price of a product or security is ""set"" by someone (i.e. a car manufacturer sets the prices of its new cars). The price of a security however is not set by an analyst or an institution, it is solely set by the stock market (perhaps based on the valuations of different analysts).  There is only one exception to this: pricing an IPO before its shares are actually traded on an exchange. In this case the underwriting banks set the price (based on the valuation) at which the shares are distributed."
None of the above. The fair value is a term used to describe an analytical result of projecting the company's future dividends and profits into a present value.  Such estimates are published by the likes of Morningstar, S&P and Value Line.  It is quite common for a stock to trade well above or below such estimated fair values. Moody's is now Mergent Online. It's no longer being printed, and must be accessed digitally. In order to browse the database, check with your local public library or university to see if you can get access. (A University will probably require you to visit for access).  Another good tool is Value Line Reports. They are printed information sheets on public companies that are updated regularly, and are convenient for browsing and for comparing securities. Again, check your local libraries.  A lot of the public information you may be looking for can be found on Yahoo Finance, for free, from home. Yahoo finance, will give financial information, ratios, news, filings, analysis, all in one place. "Here is how I would approach that problem: 1) Find the average ratios of the competitors: 2) Find the earnings and book value per share of Hawaiian 3) Multiply the EPB and BVPS by the average ratios. Note that you get two very different numbers.  This illustrates why pricing from ratios is inexact.  How you use those answers to estimate a ""price"" is up to you.  You can take the higher of the two, the average, the P/E result since you have more data points, or whatever other method you feel you can justify.   There is no ""right"" answer since no one can accurately predict the future price of any stock." In my graduate thesis I explored the liquidity changes in the bond markets. Part of my research led me to also identifying an opportunity for blockchain to play a role in measuring it, something mathematically impossible but increasingly necessary in fixed Income.  Definitely interested Thanks for your thorough reply.   Basically, I found a case study in one of my old finance workbooks from school and am trying to complete it.   So it's not entirely complicated in the sense of a full LBO or merger model.   That being said, the information that they provide is Year 1 EBITDA for TargetCo and BuyerCo and a Pro-Forma EBITDA for the consolidated company @ Year 1 and Year 4 (expected IPO). I was able to get the Pre-Money and Post-Money values and the Liquidation values (year 4 IPO), as well as the number of shares.   I can use EBITDA to get EPS (ebitda/share in this case) for both consolidated and stand-alone @ Year 1, but can only get EPS for consolidated for all other years. Given the information provided. One of the questions I have is do I do anything with my liquidation values for an accretion/dilution analysis or is it all EPS? I believe you are missing knowledge of how to conduct a ratio analysis. Understanding liquidity ratios, specifically the quick or acid-test ratio will be of interest and help your understanding. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/acidtest.asp Help with conducting a ratio analysis. http://www.demonstratingvalue.org/resources/financial-ratio-analysis Finally, after working through the definitions, this website will be of use. https://www.stock-analysis-on.net/NYSE/Company/Exxon-Mobil-Corp/Ratios/Liquidity I appreciate it. I didn't operate under selling the asset year five but other than that I followed this example. I appreciate the help. These assignments are just poorly laid out. Financial management also plays on different calculation interactions  so it is difficult for me to easily identify the intent at times. Thanks again. you can check google scholar for some research reports on it.  depends how complex you want to get...  it is obviously a function of the size of the portfolio of each type of asset. do you have a full breakdown of securities held? you can get historical average volumes during different economic periods, categorized by interest rates for example, and then calculate the days required to liquidate the position, applying a discount on each subsequent day. "If the time horizon is not indicated, this is just a ""fair price"". The price of the stock, which corresponds with the fair value of the whole company. The value, which the whole business is worth, taking into consideration its net income, current bonds yield, level of risk of the business, perspective of the business etc.. The analyst thinks the price will sooner or later hit the target level (if the price is high, investors will exit stocks, if the price is cheap, investors will jump in), but no one knows, how much time will it take." If you have two other assets whose payoffs tomorrow are known and whose prices today are known, you can value it.  Let's say you can observe a risk-free bond and a stock. Using those, you can calculate the state prices/risk-neutral probabilities. NOTE: You do not need to know the true probabilities.   The value of your asset is then the state-price weighted sum of future payoffs. The Art of Short Selling by Kathryn Stanley providers for many case studies about what kind of opportunities to look for from a fundamental analysis perspective. Typically things you can look for are financing terms that are not very favorable (expensive interest payments) as well as other constrictions on cash flow, arbitrary decisions by management (poor management), and dilution that doesn't make sense (usually another product of poor management). From a quantitative analysis perspective, you can gain insight by looking at the credit default swap rate history, if the company is listed in that market. The things that affect a CDS spread are different than what immediately affects share prices. Some market participants trade DOOMs over Credit Default Swaps, when they are betting on a company's insolvency. But looking at large trades in the options market isn't indicative of anything on its own, but you can use that information to help confirm your opinion. You can certainly jump on a trend using bad headlines, but typically by the time it is headline news, the majority of the downward move in the share price has already happened, or the stock opened lower because the news came outside of market hours. You have to factor in the short interest of the company, if the short interest is high then it will be very easy to squeeze the shorts resulting in a rally of share prices, the opposite of what you want. A short squeeze doesn't change the fundamental or quantitative reasons you wanted to short. The technical analysis should only be used to help you decide your entry and exit price ranges amongst an otherwise random walk. The technical rules you created sound like something a very basic program or stock screener might be able to follow, but it doesn't tell you anything, you will have to do research in the company's public filings yourself. It seems to me that the CBV is just about equity valuation in the public and private markets. The CFA, on the other hand, does valuation of equity, debt, and derivatives, as well as economics, portfolio management, and some other stuff related to investments.   I had never heard of the CBV before today ('murican here), but it seems that it does have value in a way that the CFA doesn't: consulting services. I have a CFA and have done valuations for public and private businesses, but I can definitely see where increased training specifically in valuation (especially in the legal aspects) could be very valuable.   The CBV may have more value if you're looking to partner up with lawyers dealing with estate planning or private business sales. If you're looking at public markets, I'd say CFA.   One thing to be aware of, though, is that the CFA is probably significantly more work. Reading and analyzing financial statements is one of the most important tasks of Equity Analysts which look at a company from a fundamental perspective.  However, analyzing a company and its financial statements is much more than just reading the absolute dollar figures provided in financial statements: You need to calculate financial ratios which can be compared over multiple periods and companies to be able to gauge the development of a company over time and compare it to its competitors. For instance, for an Equity Analyst, the absolute dollar figures of a company's operating profit is less important than the ratio of the operating profit to revenue, which is called the operating margin.  Another very important figure is Free Cash Flow which can be set in relation to sales (= Free Cash Flow / Sales).  The following working capital related metrics can be used as a health check for a company and give you early warning signs when they deviate too much: You can either calculate those metrics yourself using a spreadsheet (e.g. Excel) or use a professional solution, e.g. Bloomberg Professional, Reuters Eikon or WorldCap. The quant aspect '''''. This is the kind of math I was wondering if it existed, but now it sounds like it is much more  complex in reality then optimizing by evaluating different cost of capital. Thank you for sharing It is simply an average of what each analyst covering that stock are recommending, and since they usually only recommend Hold or Buy (rarely Sell), the value will float between Hold and Buy. Not very useful IMHO.