An upcoming change to the blog: In light of a recent conversation, I finally came to my senses and realized that I need to focus on what the true earnings power of the companies I discuss happen to be rather than focusing on the GAAP numbers which can use pension adjustments, currency headwinds, one-time expenses, and depreciation/growth capital expenditures to massage the numbers that are widely circulated to investors. The problem is this—I want to look at numbers that are as untainted as possible so that I can see what a business is really doing rather than merely discussing the gilded lilly that is presented to investors.
I anticipate that this will make my future conclusions about stocks more countercultural because there will be companies reporting seemingly higher than usual P/E ratios but actually trade at much better values because there is a one-time event cluttering the figure. Bank of … Read the rest of this article!