Why We Built Sixth Element

Most financial websites assume you already speak finance. They greet you with dozens of ratios, abbreviations and tables, and leave you to work out which ones matter. If you don't already know, it's easy to feel that investing just isn't for you.

We think that's backwards. You shouldn't have to understand finance before you can use a research tool. The tool should understand finance and explain it to you.

What you see is only part of the story

Think of a tree. You see the trunk, the branches, the leaves. What you don't see — the roots — decides how tall it can grow and whether it survives a storm.

Companies are similar. What everyone sees is the stock price, the headlines, maybe the sales figure. What holds it all up is underneath: whether the business produces cash, how much it owes, how much of each sale it keeps, and what you'd be paying for it. That's where understanding lives.

Six questions, in plain words

So Sixth Element is organised around six questions anyone can follow:

1. What does the company do?
2. Is it growing?
3. Does it make money?
4. Is it financially healthy?
5. Is the stock expensive or reasonable?
6. What am I missing? — what the numbers depend on, from the company's own filings.

Every company page answers them in plain language first — that's Simple View. If you want every metric, table and chart, Detailed View is one tap away. Nothing is hidden; it's just in the right order.

What Sixth Element won't do

Sixth Element won't tell you to buy or sell anything, and it won't guess where a price is going. We show you what the numbers say, mark what is a reported fact, what we calculated and what is our interpretation, and point you to the next question worth looking at. The decision is always yours.

Sixth Element shouldn't impress you with how much it knows. It should impress you with how clearly it explains it.