Every number in a Dash report, in plain English.
Each entry has two parts: what the term means, and why it should change what you do. Nothing here is investment advice. It is just the vocabulary, so the report reads like a briefing instead of a wall of jargon.
The five numbers that carry the verdict.
Our single best estimate of what one share of the business is actually worth today, based on the profits it produces rather than what people are currently willing to pay for it.
Why it mattersThis is the spine of the whole report: price far below fair value is the case for buying, price far above it is the case for waiting.
The gap between today's price and fair value, written as a percentage, so "+18%" means the stock would have to rise 18% to reach what we think it is worth.
Why it mattersIt converts the fair value into a plain answer to "how much room is there?", which is the first thing worth knowing before you commit money.
A 0 to 100 read on whether the stock's price action is currently healthy, blending where the price sits versus its own recent averages, how strong the momentum is, and how it has behaved over the last year.
Why it mattersA cheap stock in a falling trend is usually cheap for a while longer, so a low trend score is the main reason the report will tell you to wait even when the value case looks good.
The overall 0 to 100 grade that pulls together valuation, growth, quality, momentum, and macro into one number.
Why it mattersIt is the quick sort: high scores are worth your reading time, low scores usually are not, though the report never lets this number alone decide a buy.
The share of your portfolio the report suggests a stock could occupy if you decide to buy it, expressed as a percentage.
Why it mattersSizing is how you survive being wrong, so a stock can be a good idea and still deserve only 2% of your money.
Valuation: the methods behind the fair value, and the cross-checks kept in plain sight.
What the business would be worth if it never grew again and simply kept earning what it earns today, forever.
Why it mattersIt is a floor rather than a target: the distance between the floor and the actual price is the growth premium you are paying, and a price close to the floor means you are getting the growth almost free.
What it would cost a competitor to rebuild this company's assets from scratch today.
Why it mattersIt is a sanity check on the low end: a business trading near the cost of its own parts is hard to lose badly on, assuming the business is not melting.
The extra worth a company has beyond its assets because of a durable advantage, such as a brand, a network, or switching costs that keep customers from leaving.
Why it mattersFranchise value is what justifies paying above asset value, so if we cannot find any, a premium price is harder to defend.
How much cheaper the price is than our estimate of value, which is the cushion you get if our estimate turns out to be too optimistic.
Why it mattersEvery valuation is a guess, and the margin of safety is what protects you when the guess is wrong.
The average price target published by the Wall Street analysts who cover the stock.
Why it mattersIt is useful as a crowd reading and a sentiment check, not as truth, since analyst targets tend to cluster optimistically and follow price rather than lead it.
Valuing a company by looking at what investors are currently paying for similar businesses in the same industry.
Why it mattersIt answers "is this expensive relative to its peers?", which often matters more in the short run than whether it is expensive in absolute terms.
The full price of buying the whole business, counting both its stock and its debt, minus the cash sitting in its bank accounts.
Why it mattersIt lets you compare companies fairly when one is loaded with debt and another is loaded with cash, which share price alone hides.
What the whole business costs relative to its yearly operating profit before accounting charges for interest, taxes, and wear and tear on assets.
Why it mattersIt is the workhorse comparison for mature, profitable companies, and a number well above the peer group means you are paying up for something.
What the whole business costs relative to the actual cash it has left over each year after running and maintaining itself.
Why it mattersCash is harder to manipulate than reported profit, so this is often the most honest of the comparison multiples.
What the whole business costs relative to its annual sales, ignoring whether those sales are profitable.
Why it mattersIt is the fallback for young companies that have real revenue but no profits yet, and it is the loosest of the multiples because sales without margin can be worth very little.
The share price divided by the company's yearly profit per share, in effect the number of years of current earnings you are paying for.
Why it mattersIt is the most quoted valuation number in the world, but it is only meaningful next to the company's own history and its peers.
The same idea as P/E, but using analysts' estimate of next year's profits instead of last year's.
Why it mattersFor a fast-growing company, this shows how quickly today's expensive-looking price would become reasonable if the growth actually arrives.
The P/E ratio divided by the growth rate, a rough way of asking whether the price you pay is reasonable for the growth you get.
Why it mattersIt is the standard shorthand for "expensive but growing fast" versus "expensive for no reason."
The share price compared with the accounting value of the company's assets after subtracting its debts.
Why it mattersIt matters most for banks and asset-heavy businesses, where the balance sheet is the business, and means very little for software companies.
The annual return investors should reasonably demand for the risk of owning this particular company, used to translate future profits into today's money.
Why it mattersA higher demanded return means a lower fair value, which is why the same profits are worth less when interest rates or company risk rise.
The share of profit the company actually hands to governments, which is often different from the headline statutory rate.
Why it mattersUsing the real rate instead of an assumed one keeps the fair value honest, since tax quietly determines how much profit ever reaches shareholders.
Operating profit: what the business earns from its actual operations, before interest payments and taxes.
Why it mattersIt shows whether the core business works, separately from how it is financed, which is the starting point for most valuation work.
Operating profit before also subtracting the accounting charge for aging equipment and other long-lived assets.
Why it mattersIt is a rough proxy for cash generation and the basis of common comparisons, but it flatters companies that must constantly spend to replace their assets.
The cash a company has left after paying operating costs and spending what it needs to maintain and grow its asset base.
Why it mattersThis is the money that can actually fund dividends, buybacks, and debt repayment, so it is the closest thing to real owner earnings.
Money spent on physical or long-lived assets such as factories, servers, and equipment.
Why it mattersHeavy ongoing capex means reported profits overstate how much cash owners really get to keep.
Scenarios and risk: the range of outcomes, and how much pain sits inside it.
Our central estimate of where the price could reasonably be in about a year if things go roughly as expected.
Why it mattersIt is the honest middle, and the number the rest of the scenario range is built around.
A realistic bad outcome, sized from how violently this specific stock has moved in the past rather than from a generic worst-case guess.
Why it mattersIt is the number to sit with before you buy, because if that decline would make you sell in a panic, the position is too large.
A realistic good outcome, widened for companies whose growth and profitability justify more upside than average.
Why it mattersTogether with the bear case it tells you whether the reward for being right is bigger than the pain of being wrong.
How much upside the base case offers for each unit of downside the bear case implies.
Why it mattersRoughly 2 to 1 or better is the usual bar for a new position, and much less than that means you are being paid poorly for the risk.
How strongly a stock tends to move when the overall market moves, where 1.0 means it moves in line, 1.5 means it exaggerates, and 0.6 means it is calmer than the market.
Why it mattersHigh beta is fine in a rising market and brutal in a falling one, so it should shape how much you buy rather than whether you buy.
How much a stock's price bounces around day to day, regardless of direction.
Why it mattersIt sets your realistic expectation of the ride, and a high number means you need a smaller position to sleep at night.
The typical distance a stock travels in a single day, measured in dollars.
Why it mattersIt is the practical basis for where a stop or a bear case belongs, since a level inside normal daily noise will be hit for no reason at all.
The peak-to-trough fall from a stock's recent high to its low.
Why it mattersPast drawdowns are the best available preview of how much pain this particular name can inflict.
How much the company has borrowed compared with the money its owners have put in and left in.
Why it mattersDebt magnifies both outcomes, so a heavily indebted company is far less forgiving when business slows.
How many years of operating profit it would take to pay off the company's debt, net of its cash.
Why it mattersUnder roughly 2x is generally comfortable and above roughly 4x starts limiting the company's choices in a downturn.
How many times over the company's operating profit covers its annual interest bill.
Why it mattersThin coverage is where a slow year turns into a solvency problem, which is the failure mode that permanently destroys shareholders.
Whether the company has enough short-term assets to cover the bills coming due in the next year.
Why it mattersIt is a quick check that the company will not be forced into a fire sale or an emergency stock offering.
A single number combining several balance-sheet measures into an estimate of bankruptcy risk over the next couple of years.
Why it mattersAbove roughly 3 is the safe zone and below roughly 1.8 is distress, which is a hard stop no matter how cheap the stock looks.
Quality and growth: whether the profits are real, and whether growing makes the company more valuable.
A letter grade for how believable the reported profits are, based on how much of the profit shows up as real cash and how much rests on accounting estimates.
Why it mattersLow-quality earnings are the most common reason a cheap-looking stock turns out not to have been cheap at all.
The part of reported profit that has not turned into cash yet, such as sales booked but not collected.
Why it mattersWhen accruals run high relative to profits, reported earnings are being flattered and tend to disappoint later.
The share of reported profit that actually arrives as cash in the bank.
Why it mattersConsistently high conversion is the mark of a clean business, and a sudden drop is an early warning worth acting on.
The profit a company earns each year for every dollar of capital put to work in the business.
Why it mattersA company that sustainably earns more than its cost of capital creates value by growing, and one that earns less destroys value by growing, which flips the meaning of a growth story entirely.
The profit earned each year for every dollar of shareholders' money in the business.
Why it mattersIt shows how efficiently the company compounds your capital, but it can be inflated by heavy borrowing, so read it alongside debt.
The profit earned each year for every dollar of assets the company owns.
Why it mattersIt strips out the flattering effect of debt and shows how productive the underlying business really is.
The share of each sales dollar left after the direct cost of producing what was sold.
Why it mattersIt is the cleanest single indicator of pricing power, and a slipping gross margin usually means competition is arriving.
The share of each sales dollar left after all the costs of actually running the business.
Why it mattersRising margins alongside rising sales is the profile of a business getting stronger, not just bigger.
How fast sales are increasing compared with the same period a year earlier.
Why it mattersIt is the fuel behind every optimistic valuation, and when it slows, expensive stocks reprice fast.
The smoothed average yearly growth rate over several years, which strips out one-off good and bad years.
Why it mattersA multi-year rate is far more trustworthy than a single year, which can be distorted by an acquisition, a spinoff, or a weak comparison.
A quick test for software and high-growth companies: revenue growth plus profit margin should add up to at least 40.
Why it mattersIt captures the real tradeoff those companies face, that growing fast is acceptable only if you are not burning cash to do it.
A 0 to 9 checklist of financial health covering profitability, debt, and operating efficiency, where each point is one thing going in the right direction.
Why it mattersScores of 8 or 9 mean the fundamentals are improving on nearly every axis, and scores below 4 mean the business is deteriorating whatever the price says.
The company using its own cash to purchase and retire its shares, leaving each remaining share owning a slightly larger slice.
Why it mattersBuybacks at low prices genuinely reward long-term holders, while buybacks at high prices quietly waste the company's cash.
Buying and selling of the stock by the company's own executives and directors, which they are legally required to disclose.
Why it mattersExecutives sell for many ordinary reasons, but clusters of open-market buying are one of the few signals with a decent track record.
The percentage of a company's shares currently borrowed and sold by investors betting the price will fall.
Why it mattersVery high short interest signals that informed skeptics see something, and it also sets up the sharp, unpredictable rallies known as squeezes.
The annual dividend paid per share as a percentage of the share price.
Why it mattersIt is the part of your return that arrives in cash regardless of what the market does, which matters most if you are investing for income.
The share of profits or free cash flow being paid out as dividends.
Why it mattersComfortably under two-thirds usually means the dividend is safe and can grow, while a ratio near or above 100% is a dividend cut waiting to happen.
Timing and technicals: what the chart says about buying today versus waiting.
The average closing price over a set number of past trading days, drawn as a smooth line that filters out daily noise.
Why it mattersIt is the simplest available answer to "which way is this actually going?", and where the price sits relative to it separates an uptrend from a downtrend.
The two standard trend lines: the 50-day tracks the medium-term trend and the 200-day tracks the long-term one.
Why it mattersPrice above both is the classic healthy setup, price below both is the classic falling-knife setup, and the report leans on this to decide whether to buy now or wait.
The 50-day line crossing above the 200-day line is a golden cross, and crossing below it is a death cross.
Why it mattersBoth are slow, well-known signals rather than precise timing tools, but they usefully mark when a trend has genuinely changed character.
Whether a stock's recent strength is building or fading, measured by comparing its performance over different recent windows.
Why it mattersTrends persist more often than they reverse, so buying into strengthening momentum tends to beat buying into fading momentum.
A 0 to 100 gauge of whether a stock has risen or fallen too far too fast, where above 70 is considered stretched and below 30 is considered washed out.
Why it mattersIt is a nudge on entry timing rather than a reason to buy or sell, and it works best for choosing a better day to act on a decision you already made.
The highest and lowest prices the stock has traded at over the past year.
Why it mattersWhere the price sits in that range is a fast read on whether you are buying strength or catching a decline.
Price levels where a stock has repeatedly stopped falling or stopped rising in the past.
Why it mattersThey are useful markers for where to add or where to reassess, because they show where buyers and sellers have previously shown up in size.
Macro: the weather that moves every stock at once.
The current overall environment for stocks, built from the direction of growth, inflation, interest rates, and how freely money is flowing.
Why it mattersThe backdrop moves most stocks at once, so it affects how aggressively to size positions even when a single company's story is unchanged.
How much money is sloshing around the financial system looking for a home.
Why it mattersExpanding liquidity lifts nearly everything and contracting liquidity punishes the most expensive things first, which is directly relevant to growth stocks.
The picture of interest rates across different loan lengths, from a few months to thirty years.
Why it mattersWhen short-term rates sit above long-term rates, the curve is "inverted," which has historically been one of the better warnings that a slowdown is coming.
The extra interest rate riskier companies must pay compared with the government.
Why it mattersWidening spreads mean lenders are getting nervous, and that fear usually reaches the stock market shortly afterwards.
Where a stock sits in the boom-and-bust cycle described by George Soros, in which rising prices change the underlying reality that then justifies further rises, until the story breaks.
Why it mattersEarly stages are where the money is made and late stages are where it is lost, so the same fundamentals mean very different things depending on the stage.
The machinery behind the page, and the labels that keep it honest.
Seven independent lenses on the same company, each modelled on a well-known investor's approach: value, momentum, growth, catalysts, macro, risk, and relative value.
Why it mattersAgreement across lenses is a genuine signal of conviction, and disagreement is the most useful part of the report because it tells you exactly what the argument is about.
Each committee member's 0 to 100 read on the stock through their own specialty.
Why it mattersIt shows which specific case is strong or weak, so a stock can score 100 on growth and 38 on momentum and you know precisely what you would be betting on.
The count of how many of the seven lenses currently read bullish.
Why it mattersIt is the honest headline for how much internal agreement there is, and a thin majority is a signal to size smaller.
A safety check that stops the report from recommending a buy when the valuation or the trend contradicts it, downgrading the call to "worth watching" instead.
Why it mattersIt exists because the most expensive mistakes come from acting on a confident summary that quietly disagrees with the evidence underneath it.
How much we trust this particular report, based on how complete the underlying data is and how much the different methods agree.
Why it mattersLow confidence is a reason to demand a bigger discount before acting, not a reason to ignore the analysis.
The label on each report, one of High Growth, Established, Dividend, or Pre-Revenue / Turnaround.
Why it mattersDifferent business types need different valuation methods, and this determines which number the report treats as primary.
The valuation approach we consider most trustworthy for this specific company type, whose answer becomes the headline fair value.
Why it mattersNaming it keeps the report honest, because a growth company valued on its no-growth floor would look permanently overpriced and a struggling company valued on optimistic growth would look permanently cheap.
The total market price of all a company's shares, which is what the stock market currently says the whole company is worth.
Why it mattersSize shapes behaviour: large companies move slower and survive shocks better, while small ones offer more upside with far more volatility.
The number of shares actually available for public trading, excluding blocks held by insiders and founders.
Why it mattersA small float means the price can swing hard on modest amounts of buying or selling.
Labels on every figure showing the period it covers: TTM is the last twelve months, FY is a completed fiscal year, and FWD is an estimate of the year ahead.
Why it mattersMixing periods is how honest-looking comparisons go wrong, so the report labels each number rather than making you assume.
The quarterly filing that large investment managers must submit disclosing their US stock holdings.
Why it mattersIt is a real look at what professional investors own, with the caveat that it arrives up to 45 days late and shows positions, not intentions.