How to Value Stocks

So just how do you value the shares of a company? Based on earnings, revenues, cash-flow. . . or something else entirely? Or do you simply apply multiple valuations in order to discern what the fair price for a share of stock might be?

In this series of informative articles, Fools get a chance to learn lots of potential ways to value a company's shares, as well as helpful methods to determine whether or not a stock is undervalued right now.

How to Read a Balance Sheet
In a series of articles entitled "Liquid," Randy Befumo explores the mechanics of a balance sheet. This series defines the items that go on a balance sheet and give the reader a sense of how to harness this knowledge to pick stocks.

Introduction to Valuation
How do you value the shares of a publicly-traded company? This helpful series of articles detailed the many and varied ways one can use fundamental information about a company's basic business to value its shares. Learn to use earnings, revenues, cash-flow, equity, dividend yield and subscribers to figure out how much a company is worth.

Security Analysis
Investing, like marriage, isn't something that should be entered into lightly. You wouldn't get married on a first date, would you? Ok, maybe some of you would, but that's not really very Foolish. Before you marry... er, I mean invest in a company, there are more than a few things you need to know about it.

The Fool Ratio
The Fool Ratio, also known as the PEG, is one of the principal ways that Foolish investors use to value growth stocks. How do you calculate the Fool Ratio? When should you use it to value a company? What is the YPEG? These articles cover all of this and more.

Return on Equity
Disarmingly simple to calculate, return on equity (ROE) stands as a critical weapon in the investor's arsenal if properly understood for what it is. Return on equity encompasses the three main "levers" by which management can poke and prod the corporation -- profitability, asset management, and financial leverage. This series walks you through how to use return on equity to value stocks.

A Look at ROIC (Return on Invested Capital)
It's not profit margins that determine a company's desirability, it's how much cash can be produced by each dollar of cash that is invested in a company by either its shareholders or lenders. Measuring the real cash-on-cash return is what return on invested capital (ROIC) seeks to accomplish. This series is an introduction to how ROIC is calculated.

PEGulator
Have difficulty figuring out the Fool Ratio (PEG) on your own? Do those fractional roots cause all sorts of consternation? The Fool has a solution -- the PEGulator. Calculate PEGs online by simply inputting all of the necessary information.