Fundamental Analysis involves closely studying a company’s financial reports in order to ascertain its fair value. You’ll learn how to assess key ratios like Earnings Per Share, Price to Earnings Ratio and Debt-to-Equity Ratio so you can make appropriate investment decisions for long-term investment goals.
Fundamental analysis examines both macro-level and micro-level elements, from the economy as a whole to specific industries and individual companies.
1. Look at the Financials
Investment in stocks requires long-term consideration and requires an in-depth knowledge of a company’s fundamentals before you invest. Therefore, conducting extensive research before investing should always be conducted, such as reviewing financial statements and ratio analysis to ascertain future growth prospects of any prospective investments.


Fundamental analysis is an important process that helps investors determine what the stock should be priced at, according to its true value. Understanding this concept is especially crucial given that stocks don’t come with fixed price tags like grocery items and restaurant dishes do; furthermore, investors who lack insight into a company may overpay or underrate its true worth by overpricing or underrating it. You can utilize tools such as financial reports, ratios, government industry/market reports as well as company press releases for this analysis process.
2. Look at the Management
Fundamental analysis is used by traders to ascertain the fair value of stocks. They examine various key ratios such as P/E ratio, company earnings and economic indicators in order to ascertain a company’s health and potential growth prospects.
Process begins by looking at a wide variety of companies across industries and narrows down to individual ones based on factors like economy, industry and company size. Furthermore, qualitative considerations like management style, policies and competition may also come into play during this process.
Remember that there is no single right way to conduct fundamental analysis. Warren Buffett opts for companies trading at fair prices while Peter Lynch favors studying those whose products many people enjoy using. Ultimately, your choice of analysis depends on your trading goals and desired returns.
3. Look at the Industry
Industry of a stock is another vital consideration. A company’s industry can serve as a good indicator of future performance. Furthermore, understanding it helps you better comprehend competitive landscape and identify any risks which could hinder its performance.
An industry is defined as any group of businesses offering similar products and services, typically comprising of smaller groups than sectors and subject to greater changes due to new innovations. For instance, transportation sector includes several industries including airlines and telecom companies; however if you’re specifically investing in plane manufacturing companies you would need to look specifically at aerospace within this sector.
There are two approaches to conducting industry analysis – top down and bottom up. With top down analysis, macroeconomic factors must first be analysed before individual stocks can be assessed for analysis – this method requires more resources but may take longer.
4. Look at the Growth Rate
Fundamental analysis is an investment strategy that takes a comprehensive view of a company, looking beyond just its share price, to assess their true financial health. This involves looking at factors like revenues, earnings and profit growth alongside outside economic indicators such as unemployment rates, GDP levels and currency trends.
Fundamental analysis takes longer to produce results because they rely on information that doesn’t surface as rapidly, such as prices or volumes, unlike technical analysis which depends on daily updates of price data and volume levels. Because of this, fundamental analysts tend to use longer time frames.
Determining the growth rate of a stock may seem intimidating when faced with all its numbers, but there are several straightforward approaches you can use to do it easily. You could either calculate its growth rate using formula (year 2 value / year 1 value), or just look at its progression on Sharesight.
5. Look at the Price
Fundamental analysis is used by investors who take a long-term view on investing. This involves studying several factors related to a company, including its financial statements, price-to-earnings ratio and future projections of growth; and conducting qualitative research such as brand value, management quality and proprietary technology.
Fundamental analysis seeks to establish a stock’s intrinsic or fair value by considering external events and influences, financial statements, industry trends and publicly available information as well as internal data such as instances of leadership dealing with crises or situations. Fundamental analysts believe these factors will ultimately establish its true worth; markets should then price it accordingly – this is why long-term investors use fundamental analysis as an approach to identify those companies who may have been undervalued by market forces.