P/E vs Free Cash Flow

[VeryInterestedPerson]

Which one do you prefer for estimating your investment prospects?Or probably neither?(your votes are needed for research purposes)
All your votes and opinions will be much appreciated.

[rffrydr]

I voted free cash flow--but in this day and age any accounting without accounting for debt (Apple, you go your own way) is a non-starter. Enterprise value is loosing its relevance as earnings and credit have powered back. Ironically, high debt levels, if taken opportunistically can be a big plus. Nothing is obvious--but best not ignore there's another side to the equation.
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[nodoodahs]

Some caveats ...

I don't, strictly speaking, "invest", nor do I believe most people "invest." I trade (as do most people). "Invest" has, to me, a connotation that one is not relying upon price appreciation and a future sale of the stock for their income. In the parlance of exchange-traded stocks, that would imply only REIT or preferred-stock buyers and other dividend investors were really "investing" per se.

To me personally, I'd probably only consider what I call "investing" to be worthwhile in the context of purchasing a controlling interest in a business, which isn't likely to involve an exchange-traded stock.

I would use price to earnings, and answered such in the poll, but I would perform some diagnostics on the earnings quality; several of those would involve looking at the cash flow statements for the company. So I'm not sure that the distinction between P/E and P/FCF is as strong as a bifurcated poll would seem to make it.
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