Fast Financial Company Status...What makes you say "This one is solvent"

[Depleted]

Hi Team,
Just curious how to get a quick financial snapshot of a company, and rough numbers that need to be in place for you to decide to possibly entertain an entry into a position. As most of my work has been on the technical side, I have lots to learn about the financials, but am really only really interested in a fast quick "ok, they look like they won't be going under this year." Any suggested books, reading, articles appreciated, thanks in advancce to any who post.
Cheers, D

[Peter518]

How about this website:

http://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=clf

[MetalMeister]

That's a really good site that Peter put up!

From that I can see the p/s is really nice, the p/e is not too high, would like to see the insider ownership on a 8  billion company a % or so higher though, look at it's debt to equity - very nice, nice display of the analysts grades also and the news coverage is quality.  Check out the article on Seeking Alpha.

The top insiders were not selling big groups of shares, probably just to purchase some vacation property...

Nothing not to like about CLF!

Bet Harbinger Capital regrets bailing when they did!

Nice site that finviz. Peter.

[sidewinder]

finvix is great.  Have been using it since it came online a few years ago.  I like the quick point and click and cool way they display information. 

[Peter518]

Another website to check SPX performance live!

http://www.busystock.com/cloud/

and market reactions to earning release:  e.g.

http://www.busystock.com/i.php?s=CLF

[pinetree]

I trade indexes and don't buy any stocks aside from some uraniums here and there so don't have much to offer.  I'll say my rule of thumb is don't touch anything with more liabilities than assets.  Even as a trade I won't do it.  This info can be found on google finance on the balance sheet.  I also look at debt and how much cash and short term inv they have.  Looking at Mega they have 0 debt and 53 million in cash.  Current assets are 55.70 and current liabilities are 4.04 for the quarter ending June 30.  If the company is a producer then you can also look at cash flow, income, and others.

If I had been paying attention to stuff like that back when I got into this I'd have saved myself some money trying to turn a trade into an investment.  The now bankrupt Redcorp Ventures is one of my old junior holdings and by the time I realized their financials were a complete mess they had already fallen to around .03 from my .20 entry price so figured there was no point in selling out that low.  Figured I'd exit on a bounce but it went to zero first.  I only put $1000 into them so it's not the end of the world but when I look at how much I spend on groceries a month I realize that $1000 could feed me for a while and in that light my actions were completely careless and ignorant.  But I was new to this and will just call it a lesson learned and be thankful it wasn't a more expensive one.