Overheads, research and the cost of standing still
How overheads and research spending reveal whether a business must keep running just to stay in place, and what product businesses can learn from that.
10 min read
Insights topic
Finance
66 articles on this topic.
Articles tagged Finance
Price and patience: when great businesses become good investments
A great business is not always a great purchase. The conditions under which Buffett has bought and sold durable businesses, and the patience the approach demands.
10 min read
Reading an income statement like an owner
A plain-English walk down the income statement, line by line, asking at each step what an owner would want to know about the strength of the business.
10 min read
What the balance sheet says about cash, stock and customers who owe you
How to read cash, inventory, receivables and the current ratio, and why some of the strongest businesses look weak on traditional liquidity measures.
10 min read
Retained earnings: the quiet engine of compounding
What retained earnings are, why their growth rate is one of the clearest signs of a strong business, and why keeping profits only helps if they are reinvested well.
10 min read
Return on equity, and how leverage can flatter it
Return on shareholders' equity measures how well a business uses its owners' money. Here is how to read it, and how debt and buybacks can make it look better than it is.
10 min read
Rising prices or a bubble? Why valuation is the best clue
Strong price rises do not prove a bubble. Comparing prices with earnings, rents and incomes, against history and against reason, gives the best evidence of how stretched a market is.
10 min read
Running a business through a boom and bust
Booms tempt businesses to over-expand, borrow and extrapolate demand; busts punish them for it. A practical guide to building a business that benefits from good times and survives bad ones.
10 min read
Share buybacks: when a company invests in itself
What share buybacks and treasury stock are, why a history of buybacks can signal a strong business, and when buybacks help owners and when they do not.
10 min read
The assets the balance sheet cannot see
Why a company's most valuable assets, its brand and reputation, often appear nowhere on its balance sheet, and what goodwill and intangible assets do and do not tell you.
10 min read
The equity bond: valuing a business by its growing yield
Buffett's idea of treating shares in a great business like a bond whose interest payment rises every year, and why the price you pay still decides the outcome.
10 min read
The psychology of bubbles: why sensible people join in
Bubbles are not driven only by greed or foolishness. Extrapolation, herding, social proof, overconfidence and fading memories lead sensible people to join in. How to recognise and resist them.
10 min read
