The DeMarche Premium Common Stock Rating Service makes specific Buy, Hold and Sell categories available to you. Most services provide financial information only. The DeMarche Premium Common Stock Rating Service puts valuable information about your stocks at your fingertips. The rating service is the result of a research project to standardize comparisons between common stock securities for public companies. Finance professionals now use various parts of the rating service for applications in investment management, investment consulting, corporate finance and investor relations.

The DeMarche rating service is drawn from the power of our company Benchmarking research, incorporating our proprietary factor model,  and our analysis of  key financial characteristics. We also draw our price momentum (not shown) from the stock side of our benchmarking research to categorize stocks into Buy, Hold and Sell ratings. Our factor model forecasts future returns relative to the market based on 55 separate variables and industry. These factors cover general economic, valuation, liquidity, risk, technical, growth and profitability attributes for each of over 5,000 stocks in our ratable universe.

When a stock is rated as a “Buy,” it is expected to out-perform the overall market. From a process point of view, that means the stock currently appears to be undervalued from our factor model analysis and is currently exhibiting either strong price momentum and/or solid key financial characteristics. Conversely, when a stock is rated as a “Sell,” it is expected to under-perform the overall market due to it appearing to be overvalued by our factor model while exhibiting poor price momentum and/or deteriorating key financial characteristics. All other stocks are rated as “Hold” because our multi-layer analytic system indicates that these securities should perform broadly in line with the market.

It should also be noted that generally, if the overall market goes up or down, most stocks will follow the same course. Our rating is relative to the market; that is, if the market moves down, the stock we rate as a Buy, we anticipate, in most instances, will not fall as far as the market.

As noted above, when a stock is rated as a Sell, that does not necessarily mean we think a stock is going down in absolute terms. It simply means that, according to our factor model, the stock is expected to under-perform the overall market.

The ratings are assigned based upon DeMarche’s proprietary research. At any given time, approximately 20 percent of the stocks will be assigned a Buy rating; approximately the same percent being noted as Sell; and the remainder of the stocks for which a rating is assigned are noted as Hold.

While the supply of the Service and the information contained therein is not, and is not in any manner to be construed as, investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security, we thought it helpful to provide you with information as to our research approach.

Our philosophy is to view individual securities and situations against a broader background of a well-diversified portfolio. While we realize that any portfolio that an investor may construct is the product of its parts, our research should not be viewed as a recommendation of, or a proxy for, any particular investment or the construction of any investment portfolio that you might consider. Any investment decision that you make is solely your responsibility and is to be based on your own research and judgment.

The rating that we apply is our assessment of the expected return of that stock. Historically speaking, stocks in the top portion of our list outperform stocks in the bottom portion of our list. Of course, no one can accurately predict future results. And we expressly disclaim any notion that we can do so or have any obligation or responsibility in that regard. The Service and the information contained therein is not and should not be considered individually or collectively as recommendation to buy or sell any stock or the basis on which to form any investment portfolio.

Although stated in terms of Buy, Sell or Hold, our research provides our general view as to the security and does not reflect, incorporate or take into consideration any particular or individual circumstance of any of our subscribers or users.

DeMarche reviews thousands of stocks from available industry databases. Generally, 3,000 to 5,000 stocks have the complete financial information available to rate the stocks in our system. We use the 3,000 most liquid stocks as the basis for our model and indexes, but we rate all stocks that have all of the financial information we need.

DeMarche has established policies and practices to reduce potential conflicts of interest; however, DeMarche and its associated persons and clients may, at times, have access to nonpublic information about clients. And because DeMarche does business with a number of corporations in the areas of corporate finance, investor relations and/or retirement fund consulting, DeMarche may be considered an “insider.” Therefore, DeMarche does not rank such clients in our Premium Common Stock Rating Service.