Lootman wrote:Gengulphus wrote:I suspect that most Share Ideas readers aren't really all that interested in discussing P/BV - they'll probably have made their minds up about its value or otherwise years ago!
I.e. I think that the post was very largely off-topic for Share Ideas
It depends. If you see FA as some kind of world of its own, then you might feel that way. But in practice FA is often just one of several ways of assessing a share. And in that case the "Share Ideas" board is the right board because if you are discussing FA then you are probably applying that methodology to a particular share. You've suggested that readers don't want to see that discussion on Share Ideas but I for one would like that.
So if I want to perform some FA on, say, Tesco, readers might want to see that post on the same board as other posts about Tesco, and not in some new FA board. Because that way they get all their Tesco information in one place rather than two. And I probably have no interest in reading about FA in isolation to any particular share.
Moreover we will get HYP-style fights where one reader will complain that "You posted that on the FA board but it's really a more general discussion for Share Ideas" whilst another will assert that "You posted that on Share Ideas but you just did some FA". Or "You just criticised FA on the FA board - it should be elsewhere as I never want to read anything negative about FA". Do we really need more of that?
Whereas with TA it is perhaps more likely that I'd want to discuss graphs, charts and patterns in isolation to the underlying, because any security can be analysed in the same way. But with FA that doesn't make a lot of sense, at least not to me.
That's a matter of getting the subjects of the boards right, and part of the reason why I regard it as so important to get such things designed well. A fundamental analysis board should be about
how to calculate fundamental ratios, what they do and don't generally tell you about the companies you apply them to, pitfalls to watch out for when using them, etc. They're
tools / techniques that can be applied to look at any company, either independently of any strategy to try to get a picture of the company or with a particular strategy to see how well the company fits in with that strategy, just as technical analysis tools / techniques can be used to try to get a picture of the market in any security. So if someone wants to understand P/BV in general, maybe using a whole range of different companies as examples to help them understand it, then the fundamental analysis board would be the right place; if they want to discuss a specific share and talk about its P/BV (preferably among several other ways of looking at the company to get a more rounded view of it), Share Ideas would be the right place; if they want to talk about a specific share in the context of its place in a HYP strategy, HYP Practical would be the place for it.
It may very well be that because a fundamental analysis board's subject would essentially be generalities about fundamental ratios, either in isolation from any particular share or only using particular shares as examples, it will be of little interest to
you. Fine - that's your choice, and you should be able to avoid reading it very easily, simply by not reading the board. But IMHO your preference for not reading generalities about fundamental analysis is no more a reason not to have such a board than (for example) my preference for not reading about sports is a reason for not having the
Sports Bar.
On the "HYP-style fights", the solution to those is IMHO to be very strict about posts that say things like your examples "You posted that on the FA board but it's really a more general discussion for Share Ideas", "You posted that on Share Ideas but you just did some FA" and "You just criticised FA on the FA board - it should be elsewhere as I never want to read anything negative about FA". Basically, anything that says "You shouldn't have posted that here" in a purely negative way ought to be completely unacceptable in a post, because it's liable to set off a fight - only reporting the post or deciding that the matter is not worth pursuing at all should be acceptable. And even more constructive suggestions of a better place to post need to be treated with caution - e.g. if a newcomer asks about a share on HYP Practical and it becomes apparent that they want a wider range of replies than just ones from a HYP perspective, one might post to tell them (nicely!) that they're more likely to get what they want on Share Ideas than on HYP Practical. And one might repeat that once if they do it again, in case they missed it the first time. But if they go on doing it, one should either bring in the moderators with a report or give up,
not become a nag about the subject!
I.e. basically, the way to get rid of "HYP-style fights" is to strongly discourage them from being ignited in the first place and put them out as quickly and thoroughly as possible whenever they do get ignited. The things ordinary users can do to help that are pretty limited, basically just doing their best to refrain from igniting them themselves or pouring oil on them (and
anything negative about other users' posting behaviour is 'oil' in such a fight) and letting the moderators know so that they can use the far more effective tools at their disposal.
Finally, as regards your last point, yes, any security can be analysed the same ways by technical analysis. And with at most rare exceptions, any company (rather than security - that's basically why my preferred name for the board is "Fundamental Company Analysis") can be analysed the same ways by fundamental analysis. That doesn't mean that every fundamental ratio is of equal usefulness for all companies - for example, gearing is of very little use for banks and so is best not used on them. But the fact that such examples exist should be no more surprising than the fact that a saw is of little use for driving in a nail!
Gengulphus