Guides

The words used across this site, explained without assuming anything. If something on a company page is unclear, it should be here.

What am I looking at

Symbol (or ticker)

The short name used to identify something that trades. Apple is AAPL, Coca-Cola is KO.

It lets you search without ambiguity. In Condor, symbols carry a market suffix (KO.US, TLS.AU) because the ticker alone is not enough.

The same ticker can be two different companies on two exchanges: TLS is Telos in the US and Telstra in Australia. That is why the suffix matters.

Stock

A piece of ownership in a company. If you buy a Coca-Cola share, you own a very small part of Coca-Cola.

You make money two ways: if the company becomes worth more and someone buys it from you at a higher price, or if it pays out part of its profits (the dividend).

ETF

A basket holding many stocks at once, bought as if it were a single one. An S&P 500 ETF makes you the owner of a little of all 500 companies.

It is the simplest way not to bet everything on one company. If one of the 500 goes bust you barely notice; if that was your only holding, you lose everything.

Diversifying softens the blow, it does not remove it: if the whole market falls, the ETF falls with it.

CFD

A contract that tracks the price of something without you ever owning it. You bet on whether a price rises or falls, but you own nothing.

They let you bet on a price FALLING, and move more money than you actually have.

They are the most dangerous instrument on this list: most people who trade CFDs lose money, and holding the position open costs every night. With leverage the loss can exceed what you put in — although in the European Union and the United Kingdom retail CFDs carry negative balance protection, which caps it at the money in the account. It depends on where and with whom you trade.

Preferred stock

A share that is paid its dividend before ordinary ones, but which almost never rises in price the way the ordinary share does.

It behaves more like a bond than a stock: you buy it for the steady dividend.

If you were looking for the company, you almost certainly wanted the ORDINARY share. Condor warns you on the page when what you are looking at is not.

Warrant

A right to buy a share at a fixed price before a given date.

It costs little and moves a lot: small rises in the share get multiplied.

It expires. If the day arrives and the share never reached the agreed price, it is worth ZERO. It is not a cheap version of the stock.

What the page tells you

What the signals say

Condor's one-line summary: whether everything we know about this company points more up or more down.

A starting point for deciding whether to look further, not an instruction. Below you can see where it comes from.

It is not a buy or sell recommendation. It is a description of what the data says today.

Potential upside / downside

The move the system expects over the next twelve months, as a percentage.

It blends the analysts' target price with the earnings growth they expect, weighting each by how often it tends to be right: on that stock when there is enough history measured on it, and with a reference value —the same for every company, and flagged as such on the page— when there is not. On some stocks the targets dominate; on others there is no usable target and the whole move comes from the estimates. The page spells out what it is made of in each case.

It is an estimate, and twelve-month estimates are often wrong. Read it next to volatility: an expected +30% on something that swings 80% a year is not the same as on something that swings 15%.

Volatility

How much the price rises and falls in a normal year, as a percentage.

It measures how much of a fright you are in for. 15% is a calm company; 80% is one that can ruin your week.

High volatility does not mean bad: it means the range of possible outcomes is wide, for better and for worse.

Worst drawdown

The most it ever fell from a peak, across all the history we hold.

It answers the most useful question almost nobody asks before buying: how much did someone who bought at the worst moment lose?

Source reliability

The percentage of times each source was RIGHT, measured against what actually happened afterwards.

This is what sets Condor apart: we do not tell you what analysts say, we tell you how often they have been right about THIS stock.

Careful about comparing it against 50%. In the TECHNICAL SIGNALS the base rate for that stock is shown alongside —in some the coin flip sits at 38% and in others at 53%— and there the same 50% can be good or bad depending on where it is measured. For the four sources on the company page that base is NOT measured: the 50% shown is only a visual reference, not chance.

Price target

Where analysts think the price will be in twelve months.

Compared with today's price, it gives the move IMPLIED BY THE TARGET, which is not the move Condor publishes: that one blends this source with earnings forecasts, weighting each by how often it is right on that stock.

It expires. A target from fourteen months ago is no longer a forecast, it is history; Condor marks those as expired and does not count them.

Technical signal

A pattern on the price chart - a moving-average crossover, an indicator dropping below a level - that some traders use as a cue to buy or sell.

Condor doesn't tell you which signal is active: it tells you how often that signal was RIGHT on that specific stock, and what would have happened without it.

Most barely beat chance. A 5-point edge over the base is a good one, and it still fails almost half the time. Be wary of anyone selling you a foolproof signal.

Grade (A-F)

A summary of business quality: debt, margins, growth and cash.

It compares the company with its peers (same sector and country), not against the whole market. An A in mining does not mean the same as an A in software.

It measures the quality of the BUSINESS, not whether the stock is cheap. An excellent company can be a bad buy if it is already expensive.

The company's numbers

P/E ratio

How many years of current profits the company costs. A P/E of 20 means you pay twenty times what it earns in a year.

It is the quick way to see whether something is expensive or cheap, but only against its peers. A P/E of 30 is expensive for a bank and normal in technology.

If the company loses money, the P/E means nothing.

Margin

Out of every 100 it sells, how much it keeps as profit.

Of the four signals from filed accounts we have been able to test, margin is the only one with a positive relationship to the following year's return: a correlation of 0.13, positive in 10 of 12 sectors. It is a SMALL relationship, and in consumer and utilities it does not appear at all.

0.13 means it helps a little, not that it is right. The detail of the calculation, including the sectors where it fails, is on the methodology page.

Risk-on and risk-off

How jittery the market is overall. “Risk-on” means money is willing; “risk-off” means it runs for cover.

It says nothing about a particular company: it says what weather it is moving in. The same stock rises more easily in risk-on than in risk-off.

It is measured from market fear, what lenders charge indebted companies, and the shape of the yield curve. It is a reading of the moment, not a forecast.

Leading indicator (CLI)

An index that tends to move BEFORE the economy does, published by the OECD per country.

It tells you whether a country's background wind is improving or worsening some months before it shows up in unemployment or sales.

“Leading” means it runs ahead on average, not that it is always right. And it only exists for some countries: if a company's is missing, the page says so instead of hiding it.

ETF flow

Money going into or out of the exchange-traded funds that hold this stock.

When money flows into an ETF, the fund must buy EVERYTHING it holds, without looking at whether that particular company is doing well or badly. It is forced buying.

It pushes the price in the short run without anything having changed in the business. It explains moves; it does not justify them.

Out-of-sample post-mortem

Checking a pattern against data that was NOT used to find it.

It is the difference between “this worked when I tested it” and “this worked where I could not have been looking”. Only the second counts as evidence.

In our case the edges measured this way are SMALL: one to two points of return. We say so because a small checked number is worth more than a large unchecked one.

Debt

What the company owes. It is never looked at on its own, always relative to something.

High debt is not bad on its own; it is dangerous when profits fall, because the interest has to be paid anyway.

On the company pages you will see “Debt / equity”: how much the company owes for every euro its owners have put in. 150% means it owes one and a half for every one of its own. It is NOT debt divided by profits —that is a different ratio, and at a bank or a property company the first one is normally enormous without that meaning anything bad.

Dividend

The share of profit the company pays out to its owners, as a percentage of the price.

4% means that, if the company keeps the payment, you would receive around 4% of the current price in dividends over the year. It is not money 'recovered': the share price can fall by more than you collect.

A very high dividend is usually a warning: it is often high because the price collapsed, and it is frequently cut afterwards.

Beta

How much this stock moves when the whole market moves.

Beta 1 means it moves with the market. Beta 2, that it doubles its moves. Beta 0.5, that it moves half as much.

Percentile

Your place in a line of a hundred. Percentile 70 means it beats 70% of its peers.

Condor uses it for every pillar because a number on its own says nothing: a 12% margin means nothing until you know whether rivals sit at 5 or at 25.

Stock split

The company splits each share into several. In a 4:1 split, one share worth 80 becomes four worth 20.

It changes nothing about your money: you hold four pieces instead of one.

It does complicate historical data: a price target from before the split is in the old scale. Condor restates them so they can be compared.