Poirot Investment Detective

The Problem

Company research often gets driven by fragmented metrics and narrative. Strong profit does not guarantee cash-flow health; price support does not guarantee fair valuation; management commentary does not prove sound character. Poirot Investment Detective treats company analysis as an investigation, looking for evidence in footnotes, missing KPIs, wording shifts, and incentive structures rather than accepting a “profitable-looking” story.

How It Works

The skill turns analysis into a fixed workflow:

• Deep reading: check related-party transactions, audit opinions, financial restatements, “other” line items, and MD&A wording changes.
• Earnings quality: compute OCF / net income, Beneish M-Score, Piotroski F-Score, accrual ratio, and decompose profit sources.
• Business scene: assess gross-margin stability, customer concentration, capacity utilization, pricing power, moats, and grassroots checks.
• Management profile: evaluate strategy, execution, capital allocation, compensation structure, major-shareholder motives, and responses to probing questions.
• Risk and valuation: build red-flag lists, bear-case theses, floor valuation, margin of safety, and a weighted scorecard.

The output is a one-line investment thesis, score, catalyst, risks, and a clear action recommendation.

Boundaries

It is useful for deep diligence on public companies, but it does not replace accounting, legal, or compliance judgment. Many metrics require manually sourced financial data, and the thresholds are investigative clues, not automatic buy/sell signals.