Research on moats, business quality, and what a company is worth.

MoatScope publishes daily research on durable competitive advantages — 500+ articles grounded in SEC filings, backed by a database of moat ratings, quality scores, and fair value estimates covering 3,000+ US-listed companies.

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Latest research

New articles most weekdays: moat analysis, valuation frameworks, accounting deep-dives, and what current SEC filings reveal about business quality.

Education

Reinvestment-Driven Margin Expansion vs. Cost-Cutting

Chipotle's restaurant margin rose alongside a bigger capex line. Peloton's rose alongside 2,800 layoffs and shrinking revenue. Same metric, opposite story.

Sep 4, 2026 · 8 min read

Strategy

The Case Against Rotating a Portfolio on Macro Calls

Rotating a portfolio around a macro forecast feels disciplined, but taxes, costs, and a two-sided timing bet usually make it a losing trade.

Sep 3, 2026 · 7 min read

Strategy

How P&C Insurance Float Creates a Structural Advantage

Float, not underwriting profit, drives P&C insurance economics. Here's how combined ratio and float growth together separate real advantage from luck.

Sep 1, 2026 · 9 min read

Education

How to Read Deferred Revenue in a 10-K

Deferred revenue is cash collected before it's earned. Here's how to read the roll-forward disclosure — and what Otis Worldwide's contract liabilities reveal.

Aug 31, 2026 · 8 min read

Education

Why EV/EBIT Beats EV/EBITDA for Heavy Industry

EV/EBITDA quietly flatters capital-heavy businesses by ignoring real depreciation costs. A Nucor case study shows why EV/EBIT tells the truer story.

Aug 28, 2026 · 8 min read

Education

How Moat Erosion Actually Unfolds Across Four Quarters

Nike's multi-year footwear share slide shows moat erosion rarely confirms itself in one quarter — and one strong print can mislead just as easily as a weak one.

Aug 27, 2026 · 9 min read

Strategy

How Bankruptcy Waves Cluster at the End of Tightening Cycles

Corporate bankruptcy filings cluster after Fed tightening cycles peak, on a lag of twelve months to three-plus years — and 2023-2025 broke the recession link.

Aug 26, 2026 · 9 min read

Strategy

Dividend Aristocrats vs. Dividend Kings for Income

Dividend Aristocrats and Dividend Kings use different screening rules, and the gap changes liquidity, risk, and what a long streak actually tells you.

Aug 24, 2026 · 7 min read

Education

How to Tell Organic Growth From Acquisition-Fueled Growth

Two companies can report identical revenue growth for very different reasons. Here's how incremental ROIC and goodwill build reveal which is which.

Aug 22, 2026 · 8 min read

Strategy

What an N-CSR Filing Tells You That the Short Report Doesn't

An N-CSR filing carries a fund's full holdings, its realized expense ratio, and manager commentary the short report mailed to investors skips.

Aug 21, 2026 · 8 min read

Strategy

Why Airlines Are Structurally Worse Cyclicals

Airlines carry higher fixed costs, perishable inventory, and fuel exposure than most capital-intensive cyclicals — consolidation helped, but didn't fix it.

Aug 20, 2026 · 11 min read

Education

How to Read Impairment Charges on Long-Lived Assets

How impairment charges on long-lived assets work under ASC 360, using ExxonMobil's $19.3 billion 2020 write-down to show what the charge reveals.

Aug 19, 2026 · 8 min read

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Highest-quality wide-moat stocks right now

A live sample from the MoatScope database — the ten highest quality scores among companies we currently rate as wide-moat. Updated daily as filings and prices come in.

Ticker	Company	Sector	Moat	Quality
META	Meta Platforms, Inc.	Information Technology	Wide	90
GOOGL	Alphabet Inc.	Information Technology	Wide	89
IBKR	Interactive Brokers Group, Inc.	Financials	Wide	89
MSFT	MICROSOFT CORP	Information Technology	Wide	86
RACE	Ferrari N.V.	Consumer Discretionary	Wide	86
ASMLF	ASML HOLDING NV	Industrials	Wide	86
TSM	TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING CO LTD	Information Technology	Wide	86
AMAT	APPLIED MATERIALS INC /DE	Information Technology	Wide	85
LRCX	LAM RESEARCH CORP	Information Technology	Wide	84
KLAC	KLA CORP	Information Technology	Wide	84

Quality scores and moat ratings are MoatScope research opinions, not investment advice. Click any ticker for the full analysis.

Quality first, price second

Every piece of MoatScope research starts one step before price, with the question that matters most over a decade: is this a business worth owning at all? We rate the durability of each company’s competitive advantage as Wide, Narrow, or None — judged on switching costs, network effects, intangible assets, cost advantages, and efficient scale — and score business quality from 0 to 100 across seven pillars, from profitability and balance-sheet strength to capital allocation and earnings consistency.

Valuation comes last, deliberately: a three-tier fair value range anchored to owner earnings, the cash a business actually generates after the capital spending needed to keep it running. Every number traces to a primary source — fundamentals from SEC EDGAR filings, prices from exchange data — and every rating is re-examined as new filings arrive. The methodology guide documents the full framework.

The database behind the research

Every article draws on the same dataset: moat ratings, quality scores, and fair value estimates for 3,000+ US stocks. The interactive screener is free for the Dow 30.

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