Calcbench

Earnings quality — the question of how closely a company’s reported profit tracks the actual cash moving through the business — is one of the oldest and most durable ideas in fundamental analysis. When earnings run consistently ahead of cash flow, it’s usually a signal worth investigating further; when the two move together, it’s generally reassuring. With standardized financial data available through the Calcbench API, the Multi-Company page, or the Excel Add-in, you can construct earnings-quality screens ranging from straightforward to fairly sophisticated — and apply them across the entire market at once! To illustrate that range, we built two versions ourselves. Two ways to measure the same idea. The simple version: cash flow relative to net income. Divide operating cash flow by net income for a given period, and you have a quick, intuitive gut-check. A ratio near 1 is good and normal; a ratio well above or below 1 is worth a second look.  This ratio is also easy to explain a...

  In our latest Q&A interview with Calcbench users, we chat with Colin Morrison, CFA, who works as a credit analyst at Customers Bank in its specialty finance division. Morrison learned about Calcbench through his CFA Institute membership, and currently uses Calcbench outside of his job at Customers Bank.  How did you start using Calcbench?  My friends and I went to the CFA Institute’s website to learn about the benefits of being a CFA Institute member. We were also looking to see what data was available through the CFA Institute’s website, and happened upon Calcbench.  As a hobby, I’m learning to code in Python. I’m currently a beginner-to-intermediate coder, but hope that as I progress in my coding skills I will eventually be able to integrate Python into my work. I recently started using Calcbench’s API.  How easy is it to use the Calcbench API?  I am currently downloading information into a Jupyter notebook. This is my first attempt at trying to get...