Company Analysis
Analyzing companies is a diverse and difficult undertaking. While public corporations are obligated to disclose certain types of information, even this can often be cryptic and opaque. Due diligence is the process of trying to unearth the facts from a company's books and records.
In order to analyze companies there are a variety of popular ratios and metrics. While these provide some insight most analysts will point out that this provides only a small part of the story. The future of the business and projections of it's business plans will have just as much impact as it's current situation.
Companies can be analyzed in a variety of ways but oftentimes even people in the company have trouble seeing the forest for the trees. Thus there are many resources dedicated to trying to decipher the data.