Should You Sell Forest Laboratories Right Now?

Should you sell Forest Laboratories (NYSE: FRX) today?

The decision to sell a stock you've researched and followed for months or years is never easy. If you fall in love with your stock holdings, you risk becoming vulnerable to confirmation bias -- listening only to information that supports your theories, and rejecting any contradictions.

In 2004, longtime Fool Bill Mann called confirmation bias one of the most dangerous components of investing. This warning has helped my own personal investing throughout the Great Recession. Now, I want to help you identify potential sell signs on popular stocks within our 4-million-strong Fool.com community.

Today I'm laser-focused on Forest Laboratories, ready to evaluate its price,valuation, margins, and liquidity. Let's get started!

Don't sell on price
Over the past 12 months, Forest Laboratories has risen 3.6% versus an S&P 500 return of 11.3%. Investors in Forest Laboratories are no doubt disappointed with their returns, but is now the time to cut and run? Not necessarily. Short-term underperformance alone is not a sell sign. The market may be missing the critical element of your Forest Laboratories investing thesis. For historical context, let's compare Forest Laboratories' recent price to its 52-week and five-year highs. I've also included a few other businesses in the same or related industries:

Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's.

As you can see, Forest Laboratories is down slightly from its 52-week high and well off its 5-year high. If you bought near the peak, now's the time to think back to why you bought it in the first place. If your reasons still hold true, you shouldn't sell based on this information alone.

Potential sell signs
First up, we'll get a rough idea of Forest Laboratories' valuation. I'm comparing Forest Laboratories' recent P/E ratio of 15.2 to where it's been over the past five years.

Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's.

Forest Laboratories' P/E is lower than its five-year average, which could indicate the stock is undervalued. A low P/E isn't always a good sign, since the market may be lowering its valuation of the company because of less attractive growth prospects. It does indicate that, on a purely historical basis, Forest Laboratories looks cheap.

Now, let's look at the gross margins trend, which represents the amount of profit a company makes for each $1 in sales, after deducting all costs directly related to that sale. A deteriorating gross margin over time can indicate that competition has forced the company to lower prices, that it can't control costs, or that its whole industry's facing tough times. Here is Forest Laboratories' gross margin over the past five years:

Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's.

Forest Laboratories is having no trouble maintaining its gross margin, which tends to dictate a company's overall profitability. This is solid news; however, Forest Laboratories investors need to keep an eye on this over the coming quarters. If margins begin to dip, you'll want to know why.

Next, let's explore what other investors think about Forest Laboratories.We love the contrarian view here at Fool.com, but we don't mind cheating off our neighbors every once in a while. For this, we'll examine two metrics: Motley Fool CAPS ratings and short interest. The former tells us how Fool.com's 170,000-strong community of individual analysts rate the stock. The latter shows what proportion of investors are betting that the stock will fall. I'm including other peer companies once again for context.

Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's.

The Fool community is rather bullish on Forest Laboratories.We typically like to see our stocks rated at four or five stars. Anything below that is a less-than-bullish indicator. I highly recommend you visit Forest Laboratories' stock pitch page to see the verbatim reasons behind the ratings.

Here, short interest is at a high 8.1%. This typically indicates that large institutional investors are betting against the stock.

The last metric I like to look at is the current ratio, which lets investors judge a company's short-term liquidity. If Forest Laboratories had to convert its current assets to cash in one year, how many times over could the company cover its current liabilities? As of the last filing, Forest Laboratories has a current ratio of 4.63. This is a healthy sign. I like to see companies with current ratios equal to or greater than 1.5.

Finally, it's highly beneficial to determine whether Forest Laboratories belongs in your portfolio -- and to know how many similar businesses already occupy your stable of investments. If you haven't already, be sure to put your tickers into Fool.com's free portfolio tracker, My Watchlist. You can get started right away by clicking here to add Forest Laboratories.

The final recap

Forest Laboratories has failed only one of the quick tests that would make it a sell. This is great, but does it mean you should hold your Forest Laboratories shares? Not necessarily. Just keep your eye on these trends over the coming quarters.

Remember to add Forest Laboratories to My Watchlist to help you keep track of all our coverage of the company on Fool.com.

If you haven't had a chance yet, be sure to read this article detailing how I missed out on more than $100,000 in gains through wrong-headed selling.