Philip Fisher's Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits (1958) gave the qualitative side of analysis its founding method: scuttlebutt, or what he called the business grapevine. Fisher's insight was that a company's true quality is visible to the people who touch it every day (customers, competitors, suppliers, ex-employees, distributors, trade-press writers) long before it is visible in the financials, and that a diligent analyst can assemble that picture legally, one conversation at a time. Chapter 3 of his book sets out fifteen questions the grapevine should answer, numbered one to fifteen, and the profession still refers to them that way; where a question below is one of his, the number is given so you can go and read his treatment of it.
How do you work through Fisher's fifteen questions?
We do not run them in his order, for a practical reason. His numbering is organised by subject: runway, then R&D, then margins, then people, and so on. A Day-3 analyst does not work by subject. You work by source. You sit down for a morning and read employee reviews; you spend an afternoon on the channel; you take an evening and listen to four earnings calls. Grouping the questions by who answers them turns a reading list into a route, and it makes the first discipline of the day visible immediately: some of these are already answered on your own spreadsheet, and spending field time on them is waste.
Advertisement
Five groups, then, covering all fifteen questions between them, in the order you should actually work them.
Group 1 · questions your ten-year spreadsheet has already answered (Fisher 5, 6, 13). Do not re-scuttlebutt these.
Is the margin worthwhile (Fisher 5) is a number you computed in M8.03; read it off. Will growth require dilutive equity that cancels shareholders' gains (Fisher 13) is the share-count trend, and for Titan it is broadly flat, which is self-funded growth and a quiet quality marker. What is the company doing to maintain or improve margins (Fisher 6) is the one hybrid in this group: the level is a number, but the mechanism is not, and that half stays open for field work. Look for management commentary on premiumisation and mix (for Titan, the studded ratio and higher-margin diamond jewellery), for evidence that price rises actually stick when you check reviews and competitor pricing, for named cost programmes, and for the customer's willingness to pay a Tanishq premium in exchange for trust in purity.
Which questions does the industry map answer?
Group 2 · questions the industry map answers, before you speak to anyone (Fisher 1, 2, 11).
Does the company have products with enough market potential for a sizable, multi-year sales increase (Fisher 1) is the runway question, and you answer it from the industry map you built in M8.03 plus whatever demand signals you can find. Free sources: your own reverse-DCF implied growth set against the addressable market; Google Trends for the category; the company's TAM claims and its competitors', triangulated against each other. Is management determined to keep developing new products and markets when today's runway is exhausted (Fisher 2) asks whether the runway gets renewed, and the honest test is the record. Read a decade of annual reports for what was launched against what was promised, which you did on Day 1, then read job postings and patent filings as leading indicators of where the next investment is going.
Then the question this whole group exists for. Are there clues to relative excellence peculiar to this industry (Fisher 11) is the single most valuable and most-skipped question in the set. Every sector has its tell (M5): in jewellery it is purity and hallmarking reputation, gold-hedging discipline, and studded mix; in salvage auctions it is insurer relationships and yard density; in SaaS it is net revenue retention. Your sources are the sector playbook and competitor commentary, and this is where the edge that nobody else on the tape is bothering to build actually comes from.
Which questions do customers and the channel answer?
Group 3 · questions customers and the channel answer (Fisher 3, 4).
Does the company have an above-average sales and distribution organisation (Fisher 4) is a question Fisher weighted heavily and most modern analysts ignore entirely. Distributors, the sales force, and customers all know the answer. Free sources: distributor and dealer forums, Glassdoor reviews written specifically by sales staff, and, for Titan, the reach and quality of the Tanishq and CaratLane store and franchise network measured against Kalyan and Malabar. Walk them. How effective is R&D relative to the company's size (Fisher 3) belongs here too, because productivity shows up in the market rather than in the spend line. Free sources: revenue from products launched in the last 3–5 years, which is often disclosed; patent output; and for consumer firms the plain hit-rate of new launches, which you can read off the shelf, the app, and the reviews.
Which questions do employees and company records answer?
Group 4 · questions current and former employees answer (Fisher 7, 8, 9, 10). This is scuttlebutt's home turf.
Are labour and personnel relations outstanding (Fisher 7) means low attrition, no chronic disputes, and people who are visibly proud to work there. Use Glassdoor and AmbitionBox, and read the text of the reviews and the direction of travel rather than the star average; add attrition disclosures and any news of strikes or layoffs. Are executive relations outstanding (Fisher 8) asks whether senior people stay and whether promotion from within is real. LinkedIn gives you executive tenure and departure patterns, and a wave of senior exits is one of the loudest signals available to you; add Glassdoor's senior-leadership sentiment and the proxy or Board's Report for churn. Is there depth of management, a bench rather than a one-person show (Fisher 9), matters everywhere and matters doubly in promoter-run India. Watch the management-team page and its stability across years, and watch whether the story survives a chief executive transition; Titan handled Bhaskar Bhat to C.K. Venkataraman without a stumble, which is a genuine depth signal. How good are the cost-accounting and financial controls (Fisher 10) is really the question of whether they can see their own economics at SKU, store or cohort level. Judge it from the granularity and consistency of segment disclosure, from clean un-restated accounts (your Phase 2 reflex), and from auditor history.
Group 5 · questions the record answers: transcripts, filings, and the promise ledger (Fisher 12, 14, 15).
Does management take a short-range or a long-range view of profits (Fisher 12) asks whether they will sacrifice this quarter for the franchise's decade. The earnings-call audit (see earnings call analysis) is where you find out, by watching whether they defend long-term investment against analysts pushing for near-term margin. Does management talk freely in good times but clam up when trouble hits (Fisher 14) is the most important behavioural test in the set and the hinge into earnings call analysis, because candour in adversity is the rarest and most predictive management trait there is. Read the bad-quarter transcripts specifically; anyone is candid after a good quarter. And is management of unquestionable integrity (Fisher 15) is the veto. No margin, no moat and no runway survives a dishonest management, which is why this one is not scored but gates everything else. Your sources are the incentive and related-party read in reading the incentives, the promoter-pledge and related-party history, the restatement and regulatory record, and the pattern of promises kept or broken across the earnings calls.
What does the regrouping show?
Notice what the regrouping exposes, and keep this mapping beside the book if you want to cross-check: the numbers pre-answer 5, 6 and 13; the industry map answers 1, 2 and 11; and genuine field scuttlebutt earns its keep on 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14 and 15, which is to say on the sales organisation, the culture, the controls, the horizon, the candour and the integrity. The last two of those, 14 and 15, are so central that reading the incentives and earnings call analysis are devoted to them.
Work the five groups on every deep dive, answer all fifteen, and you will never again mistake a good spreadsheet for a good business.