How do I Fundamentally Analyze this Stock so I may see if the Company is Running Well?
a) Nothing would support this company going back to $.50 per share b) Fundamentally the market for this sectors has been obliterated and the fundamentals don't look like they will improve. Similar companies experience what this one is and will be going through, they borrow the hilt and hope they can pump enough oil and sell the oil at a high price. Oil goes below, WAYYY below the price they can sell it at and even break even, so they are burning cash until they declare bankruptcy. This company is not an exception. So here is what to look at on their balance sheet: assets and liabilities. Liabilities are debt. Their debt is over 50% of their assets, that debt has interest and there is NO WAY they are making a profit. Their website's last financial statement is from September 30th.. LOL, so they haven't even released a quarterly financial statement in two quarters straight, so have they released anything? Given what we know about the dire state of the entire oil drilling industry, lets see if these guys are the exception to the rule (spoiler; they aren't) February 15th, 2015 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/strategic-oil-gas-ltd-provides-operations-update-2015-02-19-16173591 The Company prudently elected to stop the winter Muskeg drilling program     in order to preserve capital. So now they aren't even getting new assets to resale, they aren't making any money from that operation, their debt still has interest payments though. Approximately 700 Boe/d of production has been shut-in by suspending     operations at Bistcho, Cameron Hills and Larne, which are not economic     at current commodity prices. Predictable. Also, you should notice from their actual financial statements (from 6 months ago, lol) (when the price of oil was over 100% higher than it is today, lol), this company already wasn't a good performer. They have been financing themselves by doing private placements, by issuing shares to investors that are not you, and diluting the share value of ALL OTHER SHAREHOLDERS. Dead in the water. I got this from skimming their financial report, without even being familiar with how canadian companies report. Its just bad news. You shouldn't be married to this investment.
No. The information you are describing is technical data about a stock's market price and trading volume, only. There is nothing implied in that data about a company's financial fundamentals (earnings/profitability, outstanding shares, market capitalization, dividends, balance sheet assets and liabilities, etc.) All you can infer is positive or negative momentum in the trading of the stock. If you want to understand if a company is performing well, then you need fundamental data about the company such as you would get from a company's annual and quarterly reports. Company that solves no problem whatsoever, just a middle man sucking a % of the value chain.  It's Netflix, without the contents, but with the ads. https://twitter.com/idontg1veafu/status/913395877250785280  The streaming service is minimal (90M revenue), while the hardware selling (which btw is non-recurring, a là gopro) is trending lower.  Avoid.   Watch it for a short if your broker has the shares available and it rips higher and can't make new highs.  At $35 within a week, I'd probably initiate a short position "As other people have posted starting with ""fictional money"" is the best way to test a strategy, learn about the platform you are using, etc. That being said I would about how Fundamental Analysis works . Fundamental Analysis is the very basis of learning about an assets true value is priced. However in my humble opinion, I personally just stick with Index funds. In layman's terms Index Funds are essentially computer programs that buy or sell the underlying assets based on the Index they are associated with in the portion of the underlying index. Therefore you will usually be doing as good or as bad as the market. I personally have the background, education, and skillsets to build very complex models to do fundamental analysis but even I invest primarily in index funds because a well made and well researched stock model could take 8 hours or more and Modern Portfolio Theory would suggest that most investors will inevitably have a regression to the mean and have gains equal to the market rate or return over time. Which is what an index fund already does but without the hours of work and transaction cost." You won't be able to know the trading activity in a timely, actionable method in most cases. The exception is if the investor (individual, fund, holding company, non-profit foundation, etc) is a large shareholder of a specific company and therefore required to file their intentions to buy or sell with the SEC. The threshold for this is usually if they own 5% or greater of the outstanding shares. You can, however, get a sense of the holdings for some of the entities you mention with some sleuthing. Publicly-Traded Holding Companies Since you mention Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway is an example of this. Publicly traded companies (that are traded on a US-based exchange) have to file numerous reports with the SEC. Of these, you should review their Annual Report and monitor all filings on the SEC's website. Here's the link to the Berkshire Hathaway profile. Private Foundations Harvard and Yale have private, non-profit foundations. The first place to look would be at the Form 990 filings each is required to file with the IRS. Two sources for these filings are GuideStar.org and the FoundationCenter.org. Keep in mind that if the private foundation is a large enough shareholder in a specific company, they, too, will be required to file their intentions to buy or sell shares in that company. Private Individuals Unless the individual publicly releases their current holdings, the only insight you may get is what they say publicly or have to disclose — again, if they are a major shareholder. Rather than take anyone's word for it (including and especially mine) you need to do think very carefully about your company; you know it far better than almost anyone else. Do you feel that the company values its employees? If it values you and your immediate colleagues then its likely that it not only values its other employees but also its customers which is a sign that it will do well. Does the company have a good relationship with its customers? Since you are a software engineer using a web stack I assume that it is either a web consultancy or has an e-commerce side to it so you will have some exposure to what the customers complain about, either in terms of bugs or UX difficulties. You probably even get bug reports that tell you what customer pain points are. Are customers' concerns valid, serious and damaging? If they are then you should think twice about taking up the offer, if not then you may well be fine. Also bear in mind how much profit is made on each item of product and how many you can possibly sell - you need to be able to sell items that have been produced. Those factors indicate how the future of the company looks currently, next you need to think about why the IPO is needed. IPOs and other share offerings are generally done to raise capital for the firm so is your company raising money to invest for the future or to cover losses and cashflow shortfalls? Are you being paid on time and without issues? Do you get all of the equipment and hiring positions that you want or is money always a limiting factor? As an insider you have a better chance to analyse these things than outsiders as they effect your day-to-day work. Remember that anything in the prospectus is just marketing spiel; expecting a 4.5 - 5.3% div yield is not the same as actually paying it or guaranteeing it. Do you think that they could afford to pay it? The company is trying to sell these shares for the maximum price they can get, don't fall for the hyped up sales pitch. If you feel that all of these factors are positive then you should buy as much as you can, hopefully far more than the minimum, as it seems like the company is a strong, growing concern. If you have any concerns from thinking about these factors then you probably shouldn't buy any (unless you are getting a discount but that's a different set of considerations) as your money would be better utilized elsewhere. Lets pretend that TELSA decided to split its stock 10 shares for 1. Now the stock is $35 dollars- would that make you happy?  You dont have any idea how companies are valued.   Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Class A NYSE: BRK.A - Oct 31, 12:58 PM EDT 280,210.00 USD Having all of the numbers you posted is a start. It's what you need to perform the calculation.  The final word, however, comes from the company itself, who are required to issue a determination on how the spin-off is valued. Say a company is split into two. Instead of some number of shares of each new company, imagine for this example it's one for one. i.e. One share of company A becomes a share each in company B and company C. This tell us nothing about relative valuation, right? Was B worth 1/2 of the original company A, or some other fraction? Say it is exactly a 50/50 split. Company A releases a statement that B and C each should have 1/2 the cost basis of your original A shares. Now, B and C may very well trade ahead of the stock splitting, as 'when issued' shares. At no point in time will B and C necessarily trade at exactly the same price, and the day that B and C are officially trading, with no more A shares, they may have already diverged in price. That is, there's nothing you can pull from the trading data to identify that the basis should have been assigned as 50% to each new share. This is my very long-winded was of explaining that the company must issue a notice through your broker, and on their investor section of their web site, to spell out the way you should assign your basis to each new stock. This is fine, but I'd probably spend a moment introducing WACC and it's estimation. It's also useful to link up the enterprise value to share price, so just also mentioning the debt subtraction to get equity value and division by shares for price.  Keep in mind you're usually given like a minute to answer this, so you can afford to be a bit more detailed in some parts. "Though you're looking to repeat this review with multiple securities and events at different times, I've taken liberty in assuming you are not looking to conduct backtests with hundreds of events.  I've answered below assuming it's an ad hoc review for a single event pertaining to one security. Had the event occurred more recently, your full-service broker could often get it for you for free.  Even some discount brokers will offer it so.  If the stock and its options were actively traded, you can request ""time and sales,"" or ""TNS,"" data for the dates you have in mind.  If not active, then request ""time and quotes,"" or ""TNQ"" data. If the event happened long ago, as seems to be the case, then your choices become much more limited and possibly costly.  Below are some suggestions: Wall Street Journal and Investors' Business Daily print copies have daily stock options trading data.  They are best for trading data on actively traded options.  Since the event sounds like it was a major one for the company, it may have been actively traded that day and hence reported in the papers' listings.  Some of the print pages have been digitized; otherwise you'll need to review the archived printed copies. Bloomberg has these data and access to them will depend on whether the account you use has that particular subscription.  I've used it to get detailed equity trading data on defunct and delisted companies on specific dates and times and for and futures trading data.  If you don't have personal access to Bloomberg, as many do not, you can try to request access from a public, commercial or business school library. The stock options exchanges sell their data; some strictly to resellers and others to anyone willing to pay.  If you know which exchange(s) the options traded on, you can contact the exchange's market data services department and request TNS and / or TNQ data and a list of resellers, as the resellers may be cheaper for single queries." It's been traded publicly for only about a month.  I wouldn't put much credence in a P/E ratio just yet because it hasn't had to report anything like a grown-up publicly traded company yet. You need to do a few things to analyze your results. First, look at the timing of the deposits, and try to confirm the return you state. If it's still as high as you think, can you attribute it to one lucky stock purchase?  I have an account that's up 863% from 1998 till 2013. Am I a genius? Hardly. That account, one of many, happened to have stocks that really outperformed, Apple among them.  If you are that good, a career change may be in order. Few are that good. Joe "The following is only an overview and does not contain all of the in-depth reasons why you should look more deeply. When you look at a stock's financials in depth you are looking for warning signs. These may warn of many things but one important thing to look for is ratio  and growth rate manipulation. Using several different accounting methods it is possible to make a final report reflect a PE ratio (or any other ratio) that is inconsistent with the realities of the company's position. Earnings manipulation (in the way that Enron in particular manipulated them) is more widespread than you might think as ""earnings smoothing"" is a common way of keeping earnings in line (or smooth) in a recession or a boom. The reason that PE ratio looks so good could well be because professional investors have avoided the stock as there appear to be ""interesting"" (but legal) accounting decisions that are of concern. Another issue that you don't consider is growth. earnings may look good in the current reporting period but may have been stagnant or falling when considered over multiple periods. The low price may indicate falling revenues, earnings and market share that you would not be aware of when taking only your criteria into account. Understanding a firm will also give you an insight into how future news might affect the company. If the company has a lot of debt and market interest rates rise or fall how will that effect their debt, if another company brings out a competing product next week how will it effect the company? How will it effect their bottom line? How much do they rely on a single product line? How likely is it that their flagship product will become obsolete? How would that effect the company? Looking deeply into a company's financial statements will allow you to see any issues in their accounting practices and give you a feel for how they are preforming over time, it will also let you look into their cost of capital and investment decisions. Looking deeply into their products, company structure and how news will effect them will give you an understanding of potential issues that could threaten your investment before they occur. When looking for value you shouldn't just look at part of the value of the company; you wouldn't just look at sales of a single T-shirt range at Wallmart when deciding whether to invest in them. It is exactly the same argument for why you should look at the whole of the company's state when choosing to invest rather than a few small metrics." You can't. If there was a reliable way to identify an undervalued stock, then people would immediately buy it, its price would rise and it wouldn't be undervalued any more. "Yes, in my humble opinion, it can be ""safe"" to assume that — but not in the sense that your assumption is necessarily or likely correct. Rather, it can be ""safe"" in the respect that assuming the worst — even if wrong! — could save you from a likely painful and unsuccessful speculation in the highly volatile stock of a tiny company with no revenue, no profits, next to no assets, and continued challenges to its existence: ""There is material uncertainty about whether the Company will be able to obtain the required financing. This material uncertainty casts   significant doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going   concern."" As a penny stock, they are in good company. Still, there are a variety of other reasons why such a stock might have gone up, or down, and no one [here] can say for sure. Even if there was a news item, any price reaction to news could just amount to speculation on the part of others having enough money to move the stock. There are better investments out there, and cheaper thrills, than most penny stocks." Really not sure with this one and I don't want to cheat and look up an answer.  I'd say you could find the high/low points of the stock over the last year or two and see how large the spread is between those values and the average price of the stock over the same time period.