SDS (Seductive ...'s  Instablog

Morningstar.com provides "Economic Moat" data there any subscriber can check moat level (wide, narrow, none) of a company. Unfortunately Morningstar considers mostly large-cap companies while most companies interesting to me (as DG and HY investor) are out off their scope. Morningstar.com provides "Economic Moat" data there any subscriber can check moat level (wide, narrow, none) of a company. Unfortunately Morningstar considers mostly large-cap companies while most companies interesting to me (as DG and HY investor) are out off their scope. I think it will be fruitful to analyze MOAT of smaller companies (e.g. from David Fish CCC list) and collective brain of SA folks can fill such info gaps.

NB: I just read seekingalpha.com/article/314837-how-to-f... and consider this article as a noise.

Added 13 Oct. 2012, 19 Jan 2013, 2 Feb 2013

In order not to be mixed with Morningstar I use now different semantics for moat-like companies not covered by Morningstar such as DEEP moat (similar to WIDE moat), SHALLOW moat (similar to WIDE moat) and NOT moat (similar to NONE moat).

I have analysed "moat" of some companies, results are in the table 1 below (disclamer - I own some mentioned stocks). I mix Porter's five forces with Dorsey's moat criteria (it seems they mostly derived from Porter's). I do not require that company has all features.

Table 1:

I analyzed Diebold Inc. (DBD) - Morningstar assigned NONE moat but I think they have Shallow one.

Please let me know if you disagree with some (or all) assesments or have addition(s).