I have never been a day trader and usually look to hold my stock for more than 12 months unless the story changes. As I mentioned previously, I have made millions and lost millions. It is easier, but very painful, to lose. One big stinker of a trade (held position for months, not days) lost me over $100K. I listened to a CNBC talking head. I love CNBC, but I will never follow one of their stock calls again. Basically, the same root cause of not closely following the cash. 💥

It is crazy scary how easy it is to lose money in the market. I have found from personal experience that watching the cash makes all the difference. I may be late to the party for a new startup and thats ok. I don't want to be at a party when the music stops. 😳

Industry-specific risks and commodity cycles are important. Currently, the automated system has only ingested the current quarter's data and is not comparing it against previous reports. When doing equity valuation, it is critical to consider those and many other measures of a company's narrative. These alerts are a starting point to draw your attention. Occam's Investing system evaluates traditional industrial and commodity stocks solely based on recent, unnormalized Operating Cash Flow (OCF) margins and growth, so it may simply be capturing the peak of a commodity cycle rather than long-term structural efficiency. To value these firms accurately, we would need to apply one of my former professor's (Damodaran's) frameworks. Those short-term signals must be weighed against normalized historical averages spanning the entire commodity cycle. These alerts should be used to draw your attention to things, not to assume the company is automatically a buy or a sell. In a future release, I will add automation to produce discounted cash flow analyses using a hybrid model, drawing on Occam's point of view and Damodaran's framework, with the goal of removing most bias, which is the single biggest weakness of relying on analysts' buy/sell recommendations. Hopefully, as the community expands, we can have interesting group conversations on these topics. Thanks again, Corey, for another great question that made me step back and think about the process.👍

Again, thank🚀 you for a question that shows you are thinking deeply about this. I will also save this information in the classroom section as well. ============================================================== How Occam’s Rule of 40 Applies to Industrial/Commodity Stocks Occam’s version uses Revenue Growth % + OCF Margin % — not the traditional SaaS EBITDA version. That substitution matters a lot here, and it cuts both ways. ====================================================================== Step 1: What the Formula Actually Measures in This Context For a traditional SaaS company, both components are relatively controllable — you can trade growth for margin. For an industrial or commodity company, both components are largely driven by forces outside management's control: commodity prices, cycle timing, and capex intensity. The score still computes, but what it's measuring shifts from the business model's efficiency to its position in the cycle. Step 2: How Each Zone Reads Differently ====================================================================== ELITE (R40 ≥ 40) In SaaS, this means exceptional capital efficiency. In industrials, it almost always means peak cycle — an oil producer when WTI is at $90, a steel mill mid-supercycle, a mining company when copper is surging. The number is real, but the insight changes: you're not identifying a structurally superior business, you're identifying a company riding a commodity tailwind. The Zombie Override is still valuable here — if a miner is posting 40%+ revenue growth but OCF is negative, something is genuinely broken operationally regardless of price environment. ====================================================================== HEALTHY (R40 25–39) This is where industrials tend to cluster in a normal cycle. A well-run manufacturer with modest single-digit revenue growth and 15–20% OCF margins lands here. This zone is the most accurate for industrials because it correctly identifies companies that consistently generate real cash without relying on cycle peaks. Your OCF-based margin choice is better than EBITDA here because it strips out the manipulation that industrials are particularly prone to (e.g., depreciation games on heavy machinery, capitalizing maintenance spend).