Funny, I wrote a note explaining my process a couple of days ago.. 1. What is the business, do I understand it? (If no, then less likely to buy) 2. Numbers (r

Funny, I wrote a note explaining my process a couple of days ago.. 1. What is the business, do I understand it? (If no, then less likely to buy) 2. Numbers (revenues, earnings, margins) over the last 5 years atleast 3. Piotroski score -- more of a shortcut to quickly assess quality of the business 4. Annual price returns -- more to understand how the stock has been doing over the years and over the last few months 5. Liquidity/debt ratios -- this is very industry driven, some sectors like tech have very low debt levels others have higher 6. Comparables -- steps 2 to 5 for atleast one or two direct competitors. Plus ratios ofcourse (PE,Price to Book, EV/EBITDA etc) 7. A very quick dcf -- (I've been building a tool that helps me do this quickly) If I've done all these steps (takes me about 30 - 40 minutes to do these steps), and I like the company then read the annual report (at-least twice). Often takes me a couple of weeks if not more to decide to initiate a long position. blog post -- http://equisear.ch/blog/2013/04/the-first-30-minutes-looking-at-any-stock/ http://equisear.ch/blog/2013/04/the-first-30-minutes-looking... I've been building tools that help me do this, its not ready yet but gets me there most of the way-- http://equisear.ch http://equisear.ch