Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to evaluate a business fits on one page — the same philosophy behind Value Line's investment survey and the tear sheets that shaped generations of professional investors. It's dense on purpose: the alternative is ten browser tabs and half an hour lost to switching between them.

Our chart plots price on a logarithmic scale against fundamental fair value. Equal percentage moves look equal, sustainable growth traces a straight line, and valuation gaps are visible at a glance. Warren Buffett studied Value Line's log-scaled charts for years; Charlie Munger called them "one of the great tools ever invented for investors."

The screener completes the workflow. Filter stocks by your criteria, then cycle through the results one by one with keyboard shortcuts — screen first, then go deep, without ever leaving the page.

The chart plots stock price (black line) on a logarithmic scale alongside a fair value line (teal dashed). Fair value is calculated as the trailing twelve month fundamental metric multiplied by its median historical multiple.

4 valuation methods are available via dropdown: P/E (earnings), P/FCF (free cash flow), P/CF (cash flow from operations), and P/OE (owner earnings). Different methods suit different businesses — capital-light companies often look better on cash flow metrics.

Read the chart by watching the gap between the two lines: price hugging fair value means rational pricing, a wide gap above suggests overvaluation, and a gap below can signal opportunity — while an upward-sloping fair value line tells you the fundamentals themselves are growing. Pro users unlock all 4 methods and 15 years of chart history.

The fair value line uses a 3-year geometric average of the underlying metric (EPS, FCF, etc.) rather than the latest trailing twelve months. That's a deliberate choice, not a shortcut, and it comes from how the best long-term investors actually think about valuation.

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger never valued a business on a single quarter's results — the question they asked was what a business can sustainably earn over a full cycle. A 3-year average gets closer to that number than any single year can, since it smooths out one-time items, cyclical peaks, and ordinary accounting noise.

It also happens to build in a margin of safety. For a company growing earnings 15–20% a year, the 3-year average naturally lags behind the latest TTM figure, which makes the fair value line conservative by construction: if it says a stock is "fairly valued," you're unlikely to be overpaying. The lag itself is the cushion.

This can look wrong at first glance. Take a fast grower like Microsoft — its current P/E might sit at 25x against a historical median of 32x, which looks cheap on the surface. Run the smoothed-earnings math, though, and the fair value line often puts the stock closer to fair value than that headline multiple suggests, because the recent earnings surge is already baked into the price. The chart isn't asking whether today's multiple looks low — it's asking whether the price is reasonable relative to what the business has actually, sustainably earned.

The trade-off is real: this approach is more conservative for high-growth companies and more generous for ones in decline. We think that's the right bias for long-term investors to have — better to be approximately right and conservative than precisely wrong and aggressive.

Financial data is extracted directly from SEC EDGAR filings — 10-K and 10-Q reports for 10,000+ US stocks, covering up to 15 years of history. Daily prices come from Yahoo Finance (end-of-day). All SEC links go to the official EDGAR database maintained by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

We don't touch third-party financial data aggregators — every number is parsed from the source filings ourselves. See the full data & methodology page for sourcing details and known limitations.

Every stock page includes an AI-generated briefing: a business description, a read on management's outlook, and — when the company has given one — a forward guidance table. Unlike a generic AI summary, none of it comes from outside commentary. It's built entirely from the company's own 10-K and 10-Q filings and its earnings-call transcripts.

That's what makes it useful alongside the numbers: you get what management actually told investors, not what an analyst inferred from it, and every guidance line links back to the exact quote it came from. Because the model only ever reads the company's own reports, hallucination risk stays low, and every briefing lists its sources so you can check the work yourself. It's available on every plan, free or Pro.

Yes — Price Alerts let you set triggers across 50 metric types: valuation (P/E, P/FCF, EV/EBITDA), profitability (ROIC, margins), growth, dividends, balance sheet health, and price/momentum moves like a 30% drop from the 52-week high. Alerts are checked on weekdays and delivered by email.

Free accounts get 3 alerts; Pro is unlimited. Set them up from the Alerts page or the bell icon on any stock page.

Yes, in spirit. Value Line pioneered the log-scaled chart that reveals compounding at a glance; Moody's Manuals pioneered the dense, one-page format that put a company's full financial history on a single sheet. The Ledger Terminal combines both ideas and modernizes them: data sourced directly from SEC EDGAR filings instead of manual compilation, 10,000+ stocks instead of a curated few, and AI-generated qualitative analysis — management outlook and guidance — layered on top of the numbers.

We're not affiliated with Value Line or Moody's. We just think the format they pioneered deserves to exist for every investor, not just institutional subscribers.

Free — 10,000+ stocks, 2 years of financials, AI business briefings, 10 daily stock views, screener access, 3 price alerts, and up to 3 watchlist stocks per list. No account required for basic browsing (5 daily views).

Pro ($11.99/mo billed annually) — 15 years of data, all 4 valuation methods, 9-point quality checklist, unlimited price alerts, Excel export, and unlimited watchlists. A Founders tier is also available for early supporters.

See our pricing page for full details.

Investors who study businesses, not stock prices. If you appreciate dense financial data presented clearly — or you've wished for a modern version of Value Line's one-pagers — you're in the right place. Search any stock to start — no account required.