The Journal
Blog
Market insights and trading education from the Alpha Sentinel team.
Average True Range: A Simple Measure of How Much a Stock Moves
Average True Range measures how much a stock typically moves, gaps included. Learn how it is calculated, how to compare it, and what it cannot tell you.
7 Mistakes Investors Make When a Holding Starts Falling During the Workday
A falling holding can tempt you into hasty choices. These seven workday mistakes are common, and each has a calmer alternative worth knowing.
EV/EBITDA Explained: A Valuation Measure Beyond P/E
EV/EBITDA compares a whole business, debt included, with its operating earnings. See how it works, where it helps and which costs it leaves out.
Risk Tolerance Versus Risk Capacity: Two Questions, Two Answers
Risk tolerance is how much loss you can stomach; risk capacity is how much your finances can absorb. Learn to measure both honestly.
Asset Allocation Explained: Why the Mix Matters More Than the Picks
Why the split among stocks, bonds and cash shapes a portfolio more than any single pick, and a four-stage framework for setting yours.
Portfolio Construction 101: Building From Goals to Allocation
How to build a portfolio from the ground up: define what the money is for, set an allocation, then give every holding a clear role in the plan.
Trailing Versus Forward P/E: Which Earnings Number Are You Looking At?
Trailing P/E uses reported earnings and forward P/E uses estimates. Learn how to tell them apart and compare companies without mixing the two.
P/E Ratio Explained: What It Tells You and Where It Misleads
The P/E ratio shows what investors pay per dollar of earnings. Learn what it tells you, where it misleads, and how to read it alongside other measures.
The 4% Rule Explained: Origins, Assumptions and Limits
Where the 4% retirement withdrawal rule came from, what it assumes, and how to test it and adjust it against your own situation and horizon.
Stock-Based Compensation: Why It Matters When Evaluating Profits
How share-based pay affects reported profit, free cash flow and dilution, and the simple checks that show what a company really earns for its owners.
The Opening and Closing Auctions: Why Prices Move Most at the Edges of the Day
Why prices move most at the market open and close: how the opening and closing auctions work and what that means if you only check in occasionally.
Standard Deviation for Investors: A Plain-English Guide to Dispersion
Standard deviation measures how widely returns scatter around their average. Here is how to read it, where it misleads, and how investors use it.