The Lemon Fool

Hi all,

When I first requested the creation of the above board I was very new to the world of investing. I knew that previously on TLF I'd been asking a lot questions on Share Ideas which were usually about queries I'd got upon reading company financial statements. In other words, regarding the analysis of the companies as investments they were much more slewed towards the valuation, analysis of ratios side of things, as opposed to the analysis of share price patterns on charts.

So indeed when I raised the possibility of creating such a board many Lemon Fools, did suggest that this new board be named either "Fundamental Analysis" or something very similar, e.g.

From Geng:

Gengulphus wrote:Such a board would fit in well as a "Fundamental Analysis" board in the Investors' Roundtable, to go alongside the existing "Technical Analysis" board and with a subtitle like "Analysing companies' finances and value from their accounts".

From TJH:

tjh290633 wrote:What about Fundamental Share Analysis?

From mc2fool

mc2fool wrote:Fundamental Analysis doesn't have just "some sort" of precedent in the investment world. Fundamental Analysis and Technical Analysis are the two main schools of thought for analysing potential investments. https://www.google.com/search?q=fundamental+vs+technical+analysis

Now, I do agree that the phrases themselves convey little to nothing to an outsider or newcomer (esp. "technical" analysis, at least with "fundamental" it's not a huge leap to understand that it's analysing the fundamental state of a company), but that's true in every speciality as all have their own terminology that is used within their context that may not be obvious or understood to those outside of or new to the speciality.

If I remember rightly, I was somewhat stubborn about using the word "Fundamental" in the board's title. I argued that it could be confusing for newbies to investing, and I was also of the view that in addition to the discussion of the ratios, KPIs and valuations extracted from the financial statements, some elements of the softer types of things read (i.e. tenure of directors or words relating to new projects which the company is exploring) in the reports could perhaps also be included.

In hindsight I'm thinking that I was probably wrong not to agree more wholeheartedly with other people's hints/suggestions. I can accept that some people could be confused and misinterpret the purpose of the board, which so far, does mainly discuss the fundamental parts of a Company for analysis.

In conclusion, I'm not making this post a plea to rename the board, but rather to see what other people and whether the consensus is that this would be of benefit.

thanks Matt

Buses, train, ships and planes. If TLF had 4,000 boards that would be one for each member. But it wouldn't account for guests. If we have half that amount we would have one board for two members. But it wouldn't account for guests.

If we have 1,00 boards - yada yada.

Why not have a combined title say - Company and Fundamental Analysis. I think one board could cover both subjects.

I look at fundamentals, management, history, news flow, annual reports, sector information and sometimes just anything that I think may give me a little more security when looking at a stock. I do often look at technical charts but it's fleeting.

I think the size of the audience dictates the number of boards we should have. But we also need to have a more descriptive name for the board in question and perhaps consider a slightly broader bandwidth? I'm not sure two boards is the answer - not that it's a life threatening debate though

AiY

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:Should the Company Analysis board be renamed Fundamental Analysis?

No. Leave it alone.

It only has 679 posts as it is. Why try to limit it?

IIRC, the point was raised that like 'technical analysis', 'fundamental analysis' can be done for other things besides companies. That was IMHO slightly outweighed by the fact that companies can be analysed in other ways besides 'fundamental analysis' (pedantically, I don't think they include 'technical analysis', which is done on shares and other things for which a more-or-less continuous price is available, but one can do e.g. an ethical analysis or a carbon footprint analysis of a company). But I didn't feel there was enough in it to justify using a longer board name or to be a strong argument for wanting "Fundamental Analysis" rather than "Company analysis". And what we ended up with as a subtitle for the board did a nice job of clarifying the type of analysis it's about:

Company Analysis
Analysing companies' finances and value from their financial statements using ratios and formulae

So my view is "Ain't broke, don't fix".

Gengulphus

Fundamental Analysis refers to one very specific type of Company Analysis. Using only the numbers and nothing else.

Company Analysis might also consider many other factors, such as technology trends, director changes, consumer trends, Regulatory changes etc. Despite the subtitle, I don't think any of these would be invalid considerations on the Company Analysis board. And I certainly would not want to be censoring every post that mentioned any non-numeric influence. So I concur with the previous replies, no, it should not be renamed.

Gryff

Thanks for all the replies,

Like I said in my OP, I'm not looking to rename the board, and it seems that people are still happy with the all-encompassing title.

thanks Matt