Frequently Asked Questions
All Stock Analyzer computations
based on our understanding of the methodology described in the "Rule #1" by Phil Town.
Detail explanation of all used formulas and values you can find in the Theory section -
Sticker and MOS Price Calculations article.
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In order to calculate Sticker or MOS price, we have to calculate "future" price, usually, in 10 years and do backward
calculations in order to determine current Sticker Price. However, we could find that if you calculate Sticker Price
going forward for 10 and for 5 years and then do backward calculations you can get 2 different numbers. And very often
there is a huge difference between them. So we decided to do 2 calculation - 10 years and a "short term" - 5 years. Now
you can see the difference and if the difference is big, you probably will want to figure out why. Is it geting better
or geting worse? And make your decision accordingly.
The problem is - almost all fast growing companies have huge
Equity Growth Rate at the begining and it is getting lower at the present time. Opposite situation with the big companies,
which are trying to recover. Our thought was that it is not fair to take smaller value for the last 10 years if the
company is getting better and better... So, we decided to give you 2 calculations: for 5 and for 10 years (or
closest available historical data). For calculations we are using equity growth rate for 5 and for 10 years accordingly.
Detail explanation of all used formulas and values you can find in the Theory section -
Sticker and MOS Price Calculations article.
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We retrieve all numbers from free publicly available web sites. To be exact, we are using 2 major sources:
- basic company info and financial statements from moneycentral.msn.com
- Current market prices from finance.yahoo.com (all prices delayed!)
We are trying to get as much data as we can and so far this is the best combination we could find...
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If you want to retrieve the value from a non-US exchange, you must specify the non-U.S. country code
followed by the non-U.S. symbol. For example, to do this for a Canadian security, type the following line:
CA:xyz
In this example, xyz is the ticker symbol for the security.
Valid country codes available on stock2own.com can be found in the
About section.
Please, keep in mind, if you do not use country code prefix in the search plugin, US country code will be used.
Examples:
IBM - will give you info about US stock IBM
US:MSFT - will give you info about US stock MSFT
DE:BMW - will give you info about German stock BMW (country code DE)
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YES. Stock Analyzer is available for Mobile users at
wap.stock2own.com
Please, be aware that your mobile browser must support JavaScript in order to analyze stocks at wap.stock2own.com.
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For each Watch List line, you can define your own Sticker and MOS price. When you add new symbol to your watch list, those values will be populated automatically. But after that you are the only person who can update them, no auto updates for "My Sticker" and "My MOS" prices. The reason is simple - if you want to maintain your own numbers, you should be responsible for them. If you want them updated automatically, just use "Sticker" and "MOS" numbers, not "My Sticker", "My MOS" prices...
The point is for different stocks in your watch list you may want to use different projections. You may want to use even different parameters to calculate Sticker and MOS price for different stocks. For example, Phil Town says that good margin of safety is 50%. However, if you want to re-buy stock, know the company well, if you trust managers and so on, you may re-buy it when price drop just 20%...So, there are a lot of "adjustments" may be applied to default numbers and all those adjustments are stock-sensitive.
In order to make Watch List useful for such scenarios we added two columns "My Sticker Price" and "My MOS Price". You can do your own calculations with your own numbers and Watch List is still going to be useful for you. In the same time, you can use stock2own's numbers as a "baseline" or something to compare with.
How to manage your own numbers? You can update "My Sticker" and "My MOS" prices as often as you want. In addition to that, every time when new financial statement becomes available for this company, you will see an icon with exclamation sign in the Watch List and you know that this is definitely a right time to review your calculations and may be adjust them.
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