Reading market data, without the noise

Drawdown measures how far something fell from its own high before recovering. It captures the part of risk that volatility and beta miss, and the arithmetic of recovering from one is worse than most people expect.

A price target is a model output with wide error bars and a horizon that often goes unstated. What goes into one, why two firms produce targets forty percent apart, and how to read the spread rather than the average.

Beating the published estimate is not the same as beating what the market expected. Four structural reasons a company can report better than forecast numbers and see its shares drop the same morning.

Profit is an accounting result shaped by timing judgements. Cash flow is what actually moved. The gap between them is one of the most reliable early warnings in a set of financial statements.

The questions that separate market analysis tools are what they measure, how often it updates, whether they show disagreement or hide it, and whether the output is a description or an instruction. A checklist, with no products named.

Counting articles measures how much attention a stock is getting. Scoring them measures how that attention reads. The two regularly move in opposite directions, and confusing them is a common way to misread a news spike.

A screener finds stocks matching conditions you chose in advance. A divergence reading finds stocks whose own data disagrees with itself. One requires you to already know what you are looking for, and the other does not.

An analyst rating is one research team stating an opinion. A bias score is an aggregate of public market data restated daily. They answer different questions, and each is better than the other at something.

A full year filing runs to hundreds of pages and almost nobody reads it front to back. This is what is in it, which parts carry the most information per minute, and the order that gets you there fastest.

Price often turns near the same numbers repeatedly. This covers why those levels form, how much of the effect is the audience watching them, and what a break actually shows.

EPS is profit divided by share count, and both halves move for reasons that have nothing to do with the business. Here is what changes it, and why two versions are published at once.

Two moving averages crossing have the most dramatic names in technical analysis. This covers what the event describes, the lag built into it, and why it fires most often when it works least.

The most quoted number in investing is a single division. This covers what it measures, why a low one is not automatically cheap, and the comparisons it cannot survive.

Beta compares a stock movement to the movement of the wider market. It measures shared movement rather than risk in general, and the number changes depending on how it was calculated.

Earnings dates concentrate more movement into one session than almost any other scheduled event. This describes what gets published, why the expectation matters more than the result, and how a company can beat and still fall.

Consensus is an average of separate opinions, not a single view the market holds. This covers what it is built from, what the average conceals, and what it means when consensus and price disagree.

A moving average smooths price into one line so a trend becomes visible. This covers simple against exponential, why the 50 and 200 day lines get watched, and the lag that every crossover inherits.

Fundamental analysis asks what a business earns, owns and owes, and whether the share price reflects it. Here is what the approach examines, where the numbers come from, and the questions it cannot answer.

The Relative Strength Index measures how fast a stock has moved, not where it goes next. Here is what the 70/30 thresholds really signal and when RSI divergence matters more than the number itself.

MACD compares two moving averages to reveal whether a stock's momentum is accelerating or slowing. This is what the three components actually measure and when the famous crossovers are worth watching.

Short interest tells you how many shares are currently sold short as a fraction of the float. High short interest signals bearish conviction from active participants, but it also creates the conditions for short squeezes.

When a major bank upgrades a stock, the price often jumps within minutes. But the mechanism is more nuanced than it looks, and the same upgrade can lift or sink a stock depending on context.

Market sentiment describes the prevailing mood of market participants toward a stock, sector, or the broader market. Here is what the main sentiment measures capture and where they fall short.

Divergence in trading describes a situation where two signals that usually move together begin to split apart. Understanding what that split means, and what it does not, separates useful analysis from noise.

Technical analysis reads price and volume patterns. Fundamental analysis reads business metrics. The debate between them is largely a false choice, and understanding what each does well clarifies when to reach for which.

Volume tells you how much conviction is behind a price move. A 5% rally on thin trading means something very different from a 5% rally on double the average volume. Here is how to read the difference.

The difference between describing what market data says today and forecasting what a price does tomorrow, and why that difference decides how a score should be used.

What sell-side analyst ratings actually are, why two firms rate the same stock differently, and how to read consensus without being misled by it.

A plain explanation of the Bias Score: a single -100 to +100 reading that summarizes what public market data currently says about a stock, and how to read it.