stock-analysislisted

# Stock Analysis Produce an evidence-backed fundamental analysis of one company, benchmarked against the right peers, and delivered as a written report plus a sector-relative scorecard. ## The principle that governs everything here **A financial metric carries no meaning until you know the sector it came from and the company's own history.** If X earns a 20% operating margin and Y earns 30%, that tells you nothing about which is the better business. Y may be in software (where 30% is mediocre) and X in distribution (where 20% is exceptional). Y's 30% may need three times the capital to produce, so X earns a far higher return on the money invested. Y's margin may be eroding while X's compounds. Two consequences shape this whole skill: 1. **Never rank companies on a single metric.** Every judgement combines profitability, returns on capital, cash conversion, balance sheet, growth durability, governance, and price. 2. **Compare like with like.** Benchmark against sector peers or against the company's own multi-year record — never a raw cross-industry number. For banks, insurers, REITs and miners the standard ratios are not merely less useful, they are *undefined or inverted*; those sectors need their own metric set entirely. Read `references/05-returns-and-dupont.md` for why return on capital, not margin, is the metric that actually determines compounding. ## Non-negotiables ### Never invent a number This is the failure mode that destroys the value of the whole analysi