Some reports seem crammed with facts, some with
opinion. Some spell out detailed reasons for their recommendations,
and others leave it to you to connect the dots.
You'll find some or all of the following elements
in a research report:
Company information: Products and services, industry, size, management, and recent
insider trades
Recommendation: The analyst's conclusion about the company's worth to investors, sometimes with a summary of the factors driving it
Industry: Analysis of factors influencing the industry, and sometimes comparisons with peer company stocks
Fundamental valuation: Measures of revenue, sales, price-to-earnings ratio, expenses, profits, debts, and assets, and comparisons to competitors' financial performance
Technical: Recent short- and long-term movements of share prices, measures of the stock's
volatility,
comparison of the stock price to
benchmarks
Consensus opinion: Charts and numbers showing the range of recommendations by all analysts following the stock, sometimes with independent third-party research presented separately
Disclosures: A list of possible conflicts of interest, plus information about the analyst's track record
Sam Stovall,
Chief Investment Strategist at Standard & Poor’s
Sam Stovall, 