“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
-Albert Einstein
I’ve been working on a project to play around with Python and Flask and it snowballed into a full blown web app which I’ve deployed.
The app is called Stock Glasses, and it’s purpose is to provide a tool for focused and simplified stock analysis based on concepts in respected financial investing books such as “The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham and “The Intelligent Asset Allocator” by William Bernstein.
Use the working app here – https://stock-glasses.com
Follow on Twitter: @GlassesStock
Also see the Stock Glasses YouTube Channel for demonstrations of using the app to analyze stocks.
Inspired by First Principles thinking and the quote by Einstein above, the goal is to eliminate noise and focus on the essentials to evaluate a company. Basically the app focuses on analysis of these fundamentals:
- Top Line – Revenue
- Bottom Line – Profit/Net Income
- Financial Health – Current Assets vs. Total Debt
For a full explanation of how to use the app, visit the How To Use Page of the app.
Future plans for this project include turning it into a progressive web app for offline use and playing around with comparison analysis further.
The app was built with React/Redux, Python Flask and utilizes Firestore for persisting data.
I welcome any feedback, particularly from finance people who might be able to critique or offer suggestions/improvements on the metrics and analysis tools offered by the app.
Usual disclaimers apply: I’m not a financial advisor or pro investor, so use and invest at your own risk. I do think it is a potentially useful tool for learning about basic stock analysis, understanding some common metrics and a good introduction to Value Investing.
Additional resources which inspired the app:
- “Poor Charlies Almanac” by Charlie Munger – This book explores common mistakes of thinking and the use of mental models to problem solve and look for investment opportunities or pitfalls.