Even the best stock pickers will make plenty of bad investments. Anyone who held DRA Global Limited (ASX:DRA) over the last year knows what a loser feels like. The share price has slid 57% in that time. We wouldn't rush to judgement on DRA Global because we don't have a long term history to look at. Furthermore, it's down 29% in about a quarter. That's not much fun for holders. However, one could argue that the price has been influenced by the general market, which is down 15% in the same timeframe.

So let's have a look and see if the longer term performance of the company has been in line with the underlying business' progress.

Check out our latest analysis for DRA Global

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' One way to examine how market sentiment has changed over time is to look at the interaction between a company's share price and its earnings per share (EPS).

During the unfortunate twelve months during which the DRA Global share price fell, it actually saw its earnings per share (EPS) improve by 213%. It could be that the share price was previously over-hyped.

It's surprising to see the share price fall so much, despite the improved EPS. So it's well worth checking out some other metrics, too.

DRA Global's revenue is actually up 26% over the last year. Since we can't easily explain the share price movement based on these metrics, it might be worth considering how market sentiment has changed towards the stock.

You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. This free interactive report on DRA Global's earnings, revenue and cash flow is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

A Different Perspective

DRA Global shareholders are down 57% for the year, even worse than the market loss of 6.1%. That's disappointing, but it's worth keeping in mind that the market-wide selling wouldn't have helped. With the stock down 29% over the last three months, the market doesn't seem to believe that the company has solved all its problems. Basically, most investors should be wary of buying into a poor-performing stock, unless the business itself has clearly improved. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. Even so, be aware that DRA Global is showing 3 warning signs in our investment analysis , and 2 of those don't sit too well with us...