Now liveThe Skillselion MCP - thousands of ranked skills, loaded into your agent mid-task. No install.Get it →
joellewis avatar

Equities

  • 393 installs
  • 161 repo stars
  • Updated July 18, 2026
  • joellewis/finance_skills

equities is a finance research skill that evaluates stocks and equity sectors for developers who need valuation, earnings quality, dividend profile, and portfolio mandate fit analysis.

About

equities is a finance research skill that guides developers through evaluating individual stocks and equity sectors using valuation framing, earnings-quality checks, dividend profile analysis, and mandate-fit criteria. equities is useful when building portfolio analytics, advisor tooling, or research dashboards that must justify why a security belongs in an equity allocation and how it impacts risk and concentration. equities emphasizes research outputs that can be turned into product artifacts such as a stock memo, a sector snapshot, and an allocation-fit assessment that aligns with client constraints. equities is best used when a codebase already pulls fundamental and market data and the remaining gap is a consistent decision framework for screening, explaining, and comparing equities across a coverage universe.

  • Fundamental valuation screening
  • Sector and factor exposure mapping
  • Earnings and dividend quality review
  • Position sizing within equity sleeve
  • Risk and volatility benchmarking

Equities by the numbers

  • 393 all-time installs (skills.sh)
  • +18 installs in the week ending Aug 2, 2026 (Skillselion tracking)
  • Ranked #268 of 1,106 Finance & Trading skills by installs in the Skillselion catalog
  • Data as of Aug 2, 2026 (Skillselion catalog sync)
npx skills add https://github.com/joellewis/finance_skills --skill equities

Add your badge

Show developers this skill is listed on Skillselion. Paste this into your README.

Listed on Skillselion
Installs393
repo stars161
Last updatedJuly 18, 2026
Repositoryjoellewis/finance_skills

How do you structure equity research for valuation?

Research individual stocks and equity sectors for valuation, earnings quality, dividend profile, and fit within a client's equity allocation mandate.

Who is it for?

equities fits developers building equity research workflows inside portfolio or advisory software.

Skip if: equities is not for developers who need real-time order execution or brokerage connectivity.

When should I use this skill?

Invoke when a developer asks for a structured way to research stocks, evaluate valuation and earnings quality, or document equity allocation fit.

What you get

Stock research memo, sector research notes, valuation assumptions, dividend profile summary, allocation-fit rationale.

  • equity research memo
  • sector comparison notes
  • allocation-fit summary

Files

SKILL.mdMarkdownGitHub ↗

Equities

This skill is a decision procedure: which valuation metric to use for which company, which index methodology fits which mandate, and the order of operations for analyzing a stock. It assumes the user can look up definitions; the value here is choosing the right tool.

Choosing the Valuation Metric

Match the metric to the sector and capital structure — using the wrong one is the most common equity-analysis error.

SituationUseAvoidWhy
Financials (banks, insurers)P/B, P/TBV, ROE vs P/BEV/EBITDADebt is raw material, not financing — EV and EBITDA are meaningless; book value is marked closer to fair value
Capital-intensive (industrials, telecom, energy)EV/EBITDA, EV/EBITP/E aloneNeutralizes depreciation policy and leverage differences across peers
Mature dividend payers (utilities, staples)Dividend yield + payout sustainability, P/EPEGGrowth is low and stable; income and coverage matter most
High-growth, low/no earningsEV/Sales, PEG (if earnings exist), unit economicsP/E, P/BEarnings are depressed by reinvestment; book value is mostly intangibles
Cyclicals (autos, semis, materials)Mid-cycle or normalized P/E, P/B at troughSpot P/EP/E is lowest at the cycle peak and highest at the trough — spot P/E inverts the buy/sell signal
Negative earnings, positive cash flowEV/EBITDA, P/FCFP/E, earnings yieldRatio is undefined or misleading with negative denominator
REITs and listed real estateP/FFO, P/AFFO, NAVP/EGAAP depreciation distorts earnings for property — handled in detail by the real-assets skill
Cross-border / different leverageEV-based multiplesEquity multiplesEnterprise value normalizes for capital structure

Cross-checks that apply everywhere:

  • Use forward (next-12-month) estimates for the numerator decision when the business is changing; trailing figures when estimate quality is poor.
  • Compare against the company's own history and a true peer set, not the whole market.
  • Translate any multiple into its implied assumptions (growth, margin, required return) before declaring cheap/expensive — a low multiple usually encodes a real problem.

Choosing the Index Methodology

MandateMethodologyTrade-off to flag
Cheap, tax-efficient market exposureCap-weighted (S&P 500, total market)Momentum-chasing by construction; concentration in mega-caps — a single sector can exceed 30%
Reduce concentration / small-cap tiltEqual-weightedHigher turnover and rebalancing cost; structural size and contrarian tilt
Break the price-weight linkFundamental-weighted (revenue, earnings, book)Effectively a value tilt with extra steps; compare cost vs an explicit value fund
Explicit factor exposureFactor/style index (value, momentum, quality, low vol)Verify the factor definition and rebalance rules; factor timing rarely works
AvoidPrice-weighted (DJIA-style)Weight proportional to share price is economically arbitrary — legacy only

Selection rules: default to cap-weighted for core beta; add equal- or fundamental-weighted only when the user explicitly wants the embedded tilt and accepts the turnover; treat any "smart beta" product as a factor portfolio and evaluate its factor loadings, not its marketing name.

Security Analysis Sequence

1. Classify the business — sector (GICS or equivalent), cyclical vs defensive, capital intensity, leverage. This determines the valuation toolkit (table above). 2. Quality screen — revenue trend, margin trend, ROIC vs cost of capital, balance-sheet risk (net debt/EBITDA, interest coverage), share count trajectory (dilution vs buybacks). 3. Earnings basis — pick trailing vs forward EPS, check for one-offs, use diluted share count. For cyclicals, normalize to mid-cycle. 4. Value with the matched metric — primary multiple from the table, one cross-check multiple, and where dividends are central a dividend-based check (Gordon growth: P = D1 / (r - g), valid only when g < r). 5. Factor and style context — regress (or eyeball) exposures to market beta, size, value, momentum, quality. Distinguish stock-specific thesis from a factor bet you could buy more cheaply via an index. 6. Portfolio fit — marginal effect on sector concentration and factor tilts; total return (price + dividends) is the comparison basis, never price return alone.

Key Formulas

FormulaExpressionUse Case
EV/EBITDA(Market Cap + Debt - Cash) / EBITDACapital-structure-neutral valuation
Earnings YieldEPS / PriceCompare equity vs bond yields
PEG(P/E) / Earnings Growth Rate (in %)Growth-adjusted valuation
Gordon GrowthP = D1 / (r - g)Dividend-based intrinsic value
CAPME(R) = R_f + beta × (E(R_m) - R_f)Required return input for valuation
Total ReturnPrice Return + Dividend ReturnPerformance comparison basis

Worked Example: Metric Selection and Valuation

Given: An industrial company with market cap $500M, total debt $100M, cash $50M, EBITDA $75M, EPS $7.50, price $150. Decide and calculate: 1. Capital-intensive industrial → primary metric is EV/EBITDA (table above), with P/E as cross-check. 2. EV = $500M + $100M - $50M = $550M. EV/EBITDA = $550M / $75M = 7.33x. 3. Cross-check: P/E = $150 / $7.50 = 20.0x; earnings yield = 7.50 / 150 = 5.0%. 4. Interpretation: 7.33x EV/EBITDA is modest for an industrial if margins are stable — compare against the peer set and the company's own 5-10 year range. The 20x P/E looks richer than the EV multiple because the company carries little net debt; the EV multiple is the better cross-peer comparison.

Common Pitfalls

  • Applying EV/EBITDA to banks or P/E to REITs — metric/sector mismatch is the dominant error this skill exists to prevent
  • Buying cyclicals on low trailing P/E at the cycle peak (the "value trap" inversion)
  • Treating a fundamental-weighted or smart-beta index as alpha rather than a packaged factor tilt
  • Confusing price return with total return — dividends compound to a large share of long-run equity returns
  • Survivorship bias in backtested factor or screen results

Cross-References

  • historical-risk: beta, volatility, and Sharpe ratio fundamentals
  • fund-vehicles: equity fund selection (ETFs, mutual funds, SMAs)
  • currencies-and-fx: international equity currency effects
  • asset-allocation: equity allocation within multi-asset portfolios
  • real-assets: REIT valuation (P/FFO, NAV) is owned by that skill
  • qualitative-valuation and quantitative-valuation: deeper single-company valuation workflows

Running the Script

uv run scripts/equities.py            # run the demo (uses PEP 723 inline deps)
uv run scripts/equities.py --verify   # check demo outputs against the worked example (exit 1 on mismatch)
python3 scripts/equities.py            # alternative (requires: pip install numpy)

The demo prints valuation metrics (including the worked example's EV/EBITDA and earnings yield), a factor regression on synthetic data, and sector concentration analysis. Run --help for a list of the classes and functions. For programmatic use, import the module rather than running it — the demo only executes under python equities.py.

Related skills

How it compares

Pick this when you need research structure and decision criteria rather than API integration or execution plumbing.

FAQ

What does equities produce as output?

equities produces developer-friendly research artifacts such as a stock memo outline, a sector snapshot, valuation assumptions to record in code or docs, and an allocation-fit rationale that can be displayed in a portfolio UI or exported as a report.

When should a portfolio app use equities?

equities should be used when a portfolio or advisory app already has data ingestion in place and needs a consistent framework to evaluate valuation, earnings quality, and dividend profile so decisions can be explained and audited in product reports.

This week in AI coding

Five minutes, every Monday - the tools, releases and tactics for developers.

unsubscribe anytime.