←Stage 31 · Premium
Fundamental Analysis

Business, Industry & Moat

Step back from the numbers and judge the business itself — how it makes money, its industry, and whether its edge will last. Flip through a dossier of framework diagrams: the business-model snapshot, Porter's Five Forces, the moat, the peer map.

Stage 31 of the TradeWize fundamental analysis track: judge the business itself — the business model, Porter's Five Forces, moats and the peer map.

0 / 11 done
StartLesson 1 · The Business Model — How It Actually Makes Money
What you’ll leave with11 lessons · 11-line playbook
  • Read the business model first: who pays, what for, how revenue splits (recurring vs one-off), what's left as gross margin, and the one key driver.
  • Know what one customer is worth (LTV) vs what it costs (CAC): an LTV/CAC above 3 and a short payback mean the growth pays for itself.
  • Score the five forces — rivalry, new entrants, suppliers, buyers, substitutes — before you judge any company: they set the ceiling on what ANY competitor in the industry can earn.
  • Place the industry on its life cycle (introduction / growth / maturity / decline) and label its demand secular, cyclical or defensive — together they tell you whether today's growth and margins will persist.
  • Name the moat source (intangible assets, switching costs, network effect, cost advantage, efficient scale) and rate its width — a moat is what keeps high returns from being competed away, not a good product or good management.
  • Judge the moat's DIRECTION — widening, stable or eroding — from market share, pricing power and the persistence of returns on capital. A widening narrow moat can be worth more than an eroding wide one.
  • Size the opportunity as TAM → SAM → SOM, check current share of the SAM, and measure the runway left. A giant TAM means nothing without a credible, bottom-up path to winning share.
  • Judge how management deploys every dollar across the five uses, test it with ROIC vs WACC, and check buybacks are made when the stock is cheap — not just to flatter EPS.
  • Map the company against its peers on a 2×2 (e.g. scale × premium): positioning is relative, and where it sits vs the field shows who holds the structural edge — and who's stuck in the middle.
  • Screen non-financial risk on a likelihood × impact matrix across E/S/G, and act only on the MATERIAL risks — the ones that can actually move the thesis, including the rare, ruinous tail.
  • Run the full ASSESS pass — model, industry forces, moat and its trend, positioning, and material risk — into one verdict on the durability of the business.

All lessons

  1. 01The Business Model — How It Actually Makes Money
  2. 02Unit Economics & Revenue Drivers
  3. 03Industry Structure — Porter's Five Forces
  4. 04The Industry Life Cycle & Cyclicality
  5. 05Economic Moats — The Five Sources
  6. 06Testing Moat Durability — Widening or Eroding?
  7. 07TAM, Growth Runway & Market Share
  8. 08Management & Capital Allocation
  9. 09Competitive Positioning & Peer Mapping
  10. 10ESG & Non-Financial Risk
  11. 11Business & Moat Mastery Challenge