THE TEN CRITERIA |
Isn't ten items just too simplistic? Isn't corporate accounting more complex
than that? A saying once quoted in a newspaper stated that "statistics
is the art of lying with precision." As Enron and others have recently proven,
David Copperfield could learn a couple of things from corporate accounting
practices. Our ten criteria do not claim to be able to unmask or decipher all accounting maneuvers. What they do try to gauge is a corporation's ability to fulfill its financial obligations using broad strokes. An investor can then decide if more research about a particular opportunity is in order. Rather than being a definitive analysis, we strive to point investors in new directions they would not have probably considered otherwise. Each criteria is scored in a 1-5 scale; the higher the score the better the perfornmance on that given item. Some criteria seek to compare a particular company's performance relative to a standard. Others attempt to summarize a corporation's performance in a particular category over the last five years. In addition to the ten criteria we have an "EXTRA CREDIT" criterion. Finally, we provide for a point-counterpoint in our "CLOSING ARGUMENTS" section. |