The simplest way to benefit from a rising market is to buy an index fund. While individual stocks can be big winners, plenty more fail to generate satisfactory returns. For example, the Symbio Holdings Limited (ASX:SYM) share price is down 42% in the last year. That falls noticeably short of the market decline of around 4.4%. Longer term shareholders haven't suffered as badly, since the stock is down a comparatively less painful 23% in three years. Even worse, it's down 8.8% in about a month, which isn't fun at all. We do note, however, that the broader market is down 5.0% in that period, and this may have weighed on the share price.

Since shareholders are down over the longer term, lets look at the underlying fundamentals over the that time and see if they've been consistent with returns.

Check out our latest analysis for Symbio Holdings

While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

Unfortunately Symbio Holdings reported an EPS drop of 52% for the last year. The share price fall of 42% isn't as bad as the reduction in earnings per share. So despite the weak per-share profits, some investors are probably relieved the situation wasn't more difficult. With a P/E ratio of 56.39, it's fair to say the market sees an EPS rebound on the cards.

The image below shows how EPS has tracked over time (if you click on the image you can see greater detail).

It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on Symbio Holdings' earnings, revenue and cash flow.

A Different Perspective

We regret to report that Symbio Holdings shareholders are down 41% for the year (even including dividends). Unfortunately, that's worse than the broader market decline of 4.4%. However, it could simply be that the share price has been impacted by broader market jitters. It might be worth keeping an eye on the fundamentals, in case there's a good opportunity. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 5% over the last half decade. We realise that Baron Rothschild has said investors should "buy when there is blood on the streets", but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality business. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Symbio Holdings better, we need to consider many other factors. Consider risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 1 warning sign for Symbio Holdings you should know about.