When I started investing 10 years ago, I can remember vividly how confused I was when it came to analysing a company’s financial statements. There are so many ratios out there and I was not sure which ones I should use. In the end, I just used all of them for my screening and analysis, and it was confusing looking at everything. After many years of investing, I realized that you don’t have to use all the ratios and some of the ratios have overlapping uses. I am a firm believer of the Pareto principle which means that 80% of the results comes from 20% of the causes. So, I decided to ‘Marie Kondo’ my financial screening template and zoom in on the ratios that are important to yield better results. I put a heavy weight on these four ratios. By using them, you can sniff out good companies and...