Book excerpt: Understand how to use equity market metrics such as the price/earnings ratio (and other multiples) to value public and private enterprises. This essential book gives you the tools you need to identify and qualify investments and assess business strategy and performance. Author George Calhoun, Founding Director of the Quantitative Finance Program at Stevens Institute of Technology, shows you how to use metrics to appraise mergers, acquisitions, and spin-offs. You will be able to shed light on financial market conditions, benchmark fair value assessments, and check and calibrate complex cash flow models. Market multiples share a peculiar construction: they are based on an explicit apples-to-oranges comparison of market prices with accounting fundamentals, combining data derived from two very different sources and methodologies. This creates ambiguities in interpretation that can complicate the application of these metrics for the many purposes. Multiples are thus easy to construct, but they can be difficult to interpret. The meanings of certain multiples have evolved over time, and new-and-improved versions have been introduced. The field is becoming more complex and the question of which metrics perform best can be a source of controversy. What You Will Learn Know the definitions, interpretations, and applications of all major market ratios, including: price/earnings (trailing and forward), cyclically adjusted price/earnings, cash-adjusted price/earnings, EV/EBITDA, price/sales, dividend yield, and many moreExamine the factors that drive the values of ratios from firm level (such as earnings growth, leverage, and governance) to market level (such as inflation, tax and fiscal policy, monetary policy, and international characteristics)Apply metrics in: investment analysis, index construction, factor models, sum-of-the-parts analysis of corporate structures, and detection of asset bubbles Who This Book Is For Professionals at all levels working in the finance industry, especially in fields related to investment management, trading, and investment banking who are involved with valuation and assessing and advising on corporate transactions and interpreting market trends, and university students in finance-related programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels