NEW YORK TheStreet -- When it comes time to make investment decisions, it's a good idea to be guided by more than just your gut instincts. If used effectively, fundamental analysis is one of the most useful ways to determine whether a company is a good investment choice.

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Technical When it comes to stock analysis, there are two main schools: Fundamental analysis and technical analysis. Fundamental analysis is all about using concrete information about a company's business to try to find the real value of a stock, while technical analysis eschews all of that in favor of looking at the way pure market factors will affect a stock's movement.

They call it fundamental analysis for a reason: It can be fundamental to your ability to make money in the stock market. When you take a look at a company's fundamentals, you're judging its corporate health.

After all, who wants to invest in an unhealthy company? Business Basics Before you begin to analyze public companies for their investment potential, you'll need to understand some business basics, particularly those relating to the company's financial statements. Financial statements are to an analyst what a patient's bloodwork might be to a doctor; they're the main data points that can be used to assess overall health.

There are three principal financial statements: The income statementbalance sheetand statement of cash flows. The income statement subtracts expenses from revenue to get the company's income or profit. The balance sheet compares a company's assets against its liabilities and stockholders' equity they balance each other, hence the name of the statement.

Lastly, the statement of cash flows breaks down money taken in and doled out by its purpose for example, operating, financing, or investing activities.

Financial statements are integral to fundamental analysis since they provide you with the numbers you'll make use of in your analysis. But numbers aren't everything in fundamental analysis. In addition to quantitative performance measures like the numbers you'll find in the statementscompanies provide investors with a wealth of qualitative information as well.

In every public company's annual report, management has an opportunity to explain their performance work from home jobs in pune dhankawadi lack thereof over the past year as well as plans for the future. This management communication shouldn't be taken lightly. The Big QuestionsPart 2: When you hear about a company's fundamental performance, its stock price doesn't really enter into the equation.

In the context of fundamental analysis, performance refers to the efficiency with which a company moves toward its goals. The degree of that performance is what we use to categorize a company as healthy investment potential or unhealthy investment poison.

Depending on what metric you're looking at, performance can be measured in a number of different ways. If you want to look at a company as a whole, then its ability to generate a profit is a sensible measure to review see earnings.

However, if you want to be more specific in your assessment, you can be. For example, if you want to check the performance of certain assets, then you would want to look at a metric like return on assets ROA.

There are several numbers and ratios that can be used to gauge a company's performance. Compare Comparable Companies When comparing the performance of two companies, it is important to remember that comparisons aren't absolute. Steelwon't tell you as much as you'd think. So how should you, the burgeoning fundamentals of buying and selling stock, approach metrics? For example, while eBay's fundamentals might make it look like a pig a bloated and overvalued stock compared to The Bank of New York's fundamentals, the two aren't in comparable fields, so the intrinsic value of each stock is no clearer for your comparative effort.

More suitable comparisons for eBay would be Amazon.

Analyze Like a Pro One of the big ideas behind fundamental analysis is that you're buying the stock to get the financial benefits of owning a prosperous company see equitynot for the quick and dirty capital gains sought by daytraders. What's the key to using fundamental analysis like a professional?

Benchmarking is essentially the process of observing standards against which you can measure the stock you're analyzing. Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules for fundamental analysis, which is why even the professionals get things wrong every once in a while.

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The best way to strengthen your fundamental analysis skills is through practice. Benchmark stocks, develop opinions about them, and analyze the results. Here are a few valuable activities you can do to hone your fundamentals skills: Track two stocks for three months. Pick one stock you like instinctively and one you don't. Take a look at the fundamentals of each, and try to make an objective decision about each stock based on those fundamentals alone.

Keep a record of how each pick progresses from selection to the three-month mark. Create a fundamental checklist.

Take the ratios, numbers, and other information you use the most, and write them all down on a sheet of paper. This will help you keep a handle on all the data you'll be reviewing on a regular basis. Every time you analyze a stock you're interested in using your handy new cheat sheettake a look at no less than one other player in the same industry to use as a benchmark.

As you build a larger mental library of benchmarks, you'll likely find even greater success with fundamentals. Action Alerts PLUS is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. You are using an outdated browser.

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