Experiments with Discounted Cash Flow and Reality.

How I wish I could predict the share prices of a company and do some trading.

With that I found a nice tool that helps in predict based on some analyses of the company's earnings in the past and future.

Now, getting to the point, the tool is the

"Discounted Cash Flow" calculator which tries to predict the current share prices based on the current EPS and the Company financial standings in the next few years.

With this - I experimented with http://www.moneychimp.com/articles/valuation/dcf.htm  tool which calculates the price.

First  I got the share price as of 29 Aug 2014, from finance.yahoo.com

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GM&ql=1

Next, I entered the EPS which I got from finance.yahoo.com, into the DCF calculator and estimated some growth and assuming a standard growth - I ended up getting a close to value that reflected today's share price.

Will this really work ? or is it a mirage that I am chasing.

Unfortunately, I could not use the DCF calculator if the EPS was negative. In this case I tried it for AA which has negative EPS and the tool does not allow me to calculate.

See snap below.