About

Who we are, and why this site is written the way it is

GreenValley is an independent publisher of educational material about the stock market, based in Perth, Western Australia. We write for people who want to understand listed companies and market behaviour from the documents those companies publish, rather than from someone else's opinion about them.

Why the site exists

There is no shortage of material telling people what to do with their money. There is a real shortage of material explaining how the machinery underneath it works. A reader can find a hundred articles arguing about whether a particular company is a bargain, and struggle to find one that explains how to check whether the profit figure being quoted is cash profit or statutory profit, and why that difference changes the conclusion.

That imbalance is what GreenValley was set up to correct. Our subject is the mechanics: what the primary financial statements say, how the notes qualify them, what an index is actually measuring, why a dividend yield can rise because the price fell, and which of the numbers in common use are facts and which are estimates dressed up as facts.

Two consequences follow from that choice, and they shape everything on this site. First, we can be useful without knowing anything about you, because explanation does not require personal circumstances. Second, we cannot tell you whether to invest in anything, because that question cannot be answered without knowing your circumstances. Readers who want the second thing will find us unhelpful, and we would rather say so early.

What we publish

• Company and report guides Working through annual reports, financial statements and disclosures from the primary document outwards, with the figures a reader should verify themselves.
• Market structure explainers How exchanges, indices, settlement and reporting obligations work, focused on the Australian market with comparisons to the United States and United Kingdom.
• Industry and trend analysis The drivers of demand, margin and capital intensity in a sector, and the public data series that let a reader track them independently.
• Investment strategy concepts Diversification, compounding, time horizon, risk and position sizing explained as ideas with trade-offs, including the conditions under which each one fails.

What we are not

We are not a research house selling ratings to brokers, not a fund manager, and not a licensed adviser. We have no positions to promote and no clients whose holdings we are paid to support, which is precisely what lets us explain how a set of accounts is constructed without needing to reach a conclusion about the company.

Our only commercial activity is an optional paid consultation on research method, described on the services page.

What we do not do

How a guide is produced

Every guide starts from a question a reader can act on rather than a keyword. "Is company X a good investment" is the wrong shape of question, both because we will not answer it and because the answer would depend on the reader. "How do I tell whether company X's operating cash flow supports its dividend" is the right shape: it has a method, the method can be demonstrated with the company's own statements, and the reader can repeat it on any other company.

Once a question is chosen, sources are gathered in a fixed order. Primary documents first — annual reports, financial statements and their notes, ASX and regulatory announcements, prospectuses and official notices. Second, our own worked examples, where every calculation is shown so the arithmetic can be checked. Third, published regulatory and academic material on how markets and reporting standards work. Company investor-relations pages and marketing material are read only to record what a company claims about itself, never as evidence that the claim is accurate.

Drafting keeps facts and judgment visibly separate. A sentence such as "operating cash flow was $412 million against a statutory profit of $268 million" is a fact with a page reference behind it. A sentence such as "the gap is most likely explained by the receivables build described in note 12" is interpretation, and it is written as interpretation, with the reader invited to check it. Where a figure has been adjusted by the company, we show both the reported and adjusted versions instead of choosing one.

How we check a guide before it is published

1. Step 1 — Trace every figure Each number in a draft is matched to the document and page it came from. A figure that cannot be traced is removed rather than softened, and the page reference is kept on file.
2. Step 2 — Re-perform every calculation Anything we compute from published data is recalculated from the source figures by a second person, because a worked example with an arithmetic error teaches the wrong method confidently.
3. Step 3 — Check the qualifiers Statements taken from company documents are compared against the original wording. Reporting language is carefully conditioned, and compressing it into something blunter changes the meaning.
4. Step 4 — Re-read as a beginner The draft is read by someone who did not write it and does not know the subject, to find the places where the explanation assumes knowledge the reader may not have.
5. Step 5 — Date and publish The guide is published with a publication date and a review date, so a reader can judge how current the description of a market rule or reporting standard is.

Full detail on sourcing, corrections and independence is on our editorial policy page.

Accuracy and corrections

We will make mistakes, particularly where reporting standards or market rules change after publication. When an error is confirmed, it is corrected on the page with a dated note explaining what was wrong, rather than quietly edited out. If a guide cannot be brought up to date, it is withdrawn instead of being left online to mislead.

If you find an error, write to info@yichetx.com with the page address and what you observed. You will get a reply, and a straight answer about whether we agree.

Who is accountable

Ava Thomas, Editor. Ava writes and reviews every guide published on this site and reads all correspondence sent to info@yichetx.com. The byline is a statement of accountability rather than a claim of credentials: the source files behind each published figure are kept, and any reader may ask to see the documents behind a claim.

The operating business is GreenValley, 2742 Elizabeth Street, Perth WA 3824, Australia, reachable on +61 665 514 5777 during business hours. GreenValley is responsible for all content published on this site and is the contracting party for any paid consultation.

Company details