What is Financial analysis?
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Financial analysis is the analysis of the accounts and the economic prospects of a firm.\n\nFinancial analysts, among other tasks, use to compare financial ratios (of solvency, profitability, growth...)\n\nbetween several periods (the last 5 years for example) \nand between similar firms. \nThose ratios are calculated by dividing a (group of) account balance(s), taken from the balance sheet and / or the income statement, by another, for example :\n\nNet profit / equity = return on equity \nGross profit / balance sheet total = return on assets \nStock price / earnings per share = P/E-ratio
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A short analysis of a book, paper, or article. A kind of Brief outline of what the thing is about.
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Financial accountancy (or financial accounting) is the branch of accountancy concerned with the preparation of financial statements for external decision makers, such as stockholders, suppliers, banks and government agencies. The fundamental need for financial accounting is to reduce principal-agent problem by measuring and monitoring agents' performance.\n\nThe accounting equation (Assets = Liabilities + Owners' Equity) and financial statements are the main topics of financial accounting.\n\nA financial accountant must equal assets with liabilities and owner’s equity. The balance sheet (or the statement of financial position) is the financial statement that summarizes the assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity of the company.\n\nMergers and Acquisitions - M&A\nA general term used to refer to the consolidation of companies. A merger is a combination of two companies to form a new company, while an acquisition is the purchase of one company by another with no new company being formed.\n\nInvestopedia Says: An example of a major merger is the merging of JDS Fitel Inc and Uniphase Corp in 1999 to form JDS Uniphase. An example of a major acquisition is Manulife Financial Corporation's 2004 acquisition of John Hancock Financial Services Inc. \n\nThe term M&A also refers to the department at financial institutions that deals with mergers and acquisitions.\n\n\n\nhttp://www.answers.com/topic/mergers-and-acquisitions?method=22
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an analysis, or a graph/chart/plot
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Two types; business accounts analyst and private accounts analysyt.  The monitor ingoings and outgoings to see if there is any impending dangers and how to protect you, or your business, from unexpected money worries.\n\nThey also look to see what is the best way to manage your money, what you can save on or what you should be spending more money on.....rather like a motherly bit of advice on your money.\n\nThe main thing to remember is, although they are quite essential for business, they basically use common sense and certainly know how to advise you on how much you shoudl pay them!\n\nmrben
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Ratio analysis is not the best methodology for determining financial status.  The best approach is creating a cash flow model that will forecast the future cash flows of the organization.  Then discount the cash flows back to account for time and add the current cash in the organization.  This will give you the total net worth of the organization.  Divide this number by the total shares outstanding and this will give you an estimation of what the stock should be selling.  Compare this estimation to what the actual stock price is selling and you would get a good idea of a stock price is over priced or not.\n\nOr simply look at Moody's or S&P's credit rating for the company.  I believe both of the services have GM listed as junk.
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Analysis is the generic name given to any branch of mathematics that depends upon the concepts of limits and convergence. It studies closely related topics such as continuity, integration, differentiability and transcendental functions. These topics are often studied in the context of real numbers, complex numbers, and their functions. However, they can also be defined and studied in any space of mathematical objects that is equipped with a definition of "nearness" (a topological space) or "distance" (a metric space). Mathematical analysis has its beginnings in the rigorous formulation of calculus.\n\n\nMathematical analysis includes the following subfields:\n\nReal analysis, the formally rigorous study of derivatives and integrals of real-valued functions. This includes the study of sequences and its limits, series, and measures. \nFunctional analysis studies spaces of functions and introduces concepts such as Banach spaces and Hilbert spaces. \nHarmonic analysis deals with Fourier series and their abstractions. \nComplex analysis, the study of functions from the complex plane to the complex plane which are complex differentiable. \np-adic analysis, the study of analysis within the context of p-adic numbers, which differs in some interesting and surprising ways from its real and complex counterparts. \nNon-standard analysis, which investigates the hyperreal numbers and their functions and gives a rigorous treatment of infinitesimals and infinitely large numbers. It is normally classed as model theory.
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systems analysis is to take an objective look at a company's use of infrastructure.  often systems analysts are expected to recommend improvements to the current system to make it more efficient
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Finance studies and addresses the ways in which individuals, businesses and organizations raise, allocate and use monetary resources over time, taking into account the risks entailed in their projects. The term finance may thus incorporate any of the following:\n\nThe study of money and other assets \nThe management and control of those assets \nProfiling and managing project risks \nAs a verb, "to finance" is to provide funds for business.
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Policy analysis is the systematic evaluation of alternative means of achieving social goals. It is frequently deployed in the public sector but is equally applicable to other kinds of organizations. Most policy analysts have graduated from public policy school.\n\nPolicy analysis refers to the analysis of existing or prospective policies with the intention of improving social welfare. One common methodology is to define the problem and evaluation criteria; identify all alternatives; evaluate them; and recommend the best policy option.\n\nPolicy analysis differs from program evaluation in that it attempts to evaluate changes to policies and programs rather than evaluating their current performance. Policy analysts can come from many backgrounds including sociology, psychology, economics, law, political science, public policy, social work and public administration.
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I would say that probably the best technical stock analysis software is MetaStock. It has more than everything you would ever need - tons of indicators and very user-friendly interface. Check it out at www.metastock.com\nIt's quite pricy, but it's worth the money if you take it seriously
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That's kind of vague.  You could start evaluating how well a company is doing using financial ratios.  http://beginnersinvest.about.com/od/financialratio/\n\nActually finding the value of a company takes more work with one of the standard methods such as WACC or APV.
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yeah! wissam is right.  it depends entirely on your purpose... by analysis, we are trying to separate and study the individual parts in order to make conclusion about the whole thing.  and from my interpretation of your question, you mean vertical analysis.\n\nVertical analysis would mean analyzing each component of the income statement, from the revenues section up to the net income.  this would mean comparing the different income statement components with each other.  in this case, you might want to determine the gross profit ratio (Gross profit divided by sales), the operating profit ratio(operating profit divided by sales), the net profit ratio (net income divided by sales).\n\nUnless you want to conduct an audit, there is no need to prepare workpapers or review the G/L accounts.  but you may interview some people within the company to answer some questions such as why costs are so huge and sales are too low or way too high, this might help you with your analysis...
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Accounting is the principles behind and the process of tracking the resources of a company to provide management information to the company and its stakeholders.\n\nThat's the one sentence answer. \n\nFor the rest, you can have a look at the CPA site, it was written by Uni Graduates, so it takes about 3 pages to say the same thing
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Financial analysts Procure, allocate and control finances.\n\nProcure: make sure that funds are available for use.\nAllocate: budgets or divides financial resources according to priority.\nControl: makes sure that funds are used as it was intended.
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Almost all technical analysis systems I have read on are not based on careful mathematical or scientific evaluation.  Many experts, such as Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch consider technical analysis do be a worthless method of analysis.  Many technical analysis writers can sound good to newbies, but they usually based on unsound theories.
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Most important aspect of the financial statement is the balance sheet.  On the balance sheet you show the total assets on top (cash, investments, real estate, etc.), then show liabilities (notes payable, loans, etc.) and then net worth (assets minus liabilities).