Many investors look at the same tired old metrics day after day. But to find great stocks that others miss, you have to expand your vision.

Sure, you know all about the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio and return on equity (ROE). Like many metrics, they're imperfect, and by themselves, they don't give you enough information on which to base an investment decision. Earnings, after all, can be (legally) manipulated to some degree by management, and ROEs are sometimes high because of steep debt. Hershey , for example, recently sported an ROE of 69%, but it has a lofty total debt-to-equity ratio of 4.23.

Don't neglect lesser-known metrics, though, because they can also tell you a lot about a company.

Revenue and earnings per employee
For example, you might look into how much money a company is raking in per employee (revenue), and how much of that it's keeping as profit (earnings).

Company

CAPS Stars(out of 5)

Revenue Per Employee

Net Income Per Employee

Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO)

****

$335,011

$68,106

PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP)

*****

$216,303

$25,778

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL)

***

$1,080,063

$161,719

Dell (Nasdaq: DELL)

**

$701,908

$24,052

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ)

***

$365,125

$22,816

Data: Motley Fool CAPS.

That table alone shows you that technology companies in general seem to wring more money out of each employee's work than the snack-and-beverage companies do. It also shows which ones are most effective within each industry. Apple is the most impressive, but note that it still sports only three stars, compared with five for PepsiCo. That simply means that our Motley Fool CAPS communitythinks PepsiCo is better poised to outperform the market at the moment, perhaps because Apple stock has gone up so much this year.

Ideally, you might jot down these numbers for the stocks that interest you and then follow them over time to see whether they're trending up or down.

R&D
While the above numbers reflect how efficient a company has been, a look at its research and development spending can reflect its potential. Check out these examples.

Company Continued...