My wife keeps a spread sheet and looks for not just a bad number but any disturbing trend. The swings can be surprising.
Quote from LondonUSTrader:
Thinking about this more, here's a couple of ideas for monitoring financial health.
Ratio of excess net capital to net capital required. It seems the better firms have excess net capital exceeding net capital required.
According to my calculations in the current report the mean FCM had excess net capital exceeding net capital required by 5.87%. I note that for both MFG and PFG their excess net capital was lower than net capital required. In the latest report PFG's excess net capital was 52% lower than net capital required. A warning sign surely?
The other thing to possibly monitor is the monthly change in segregated assets as a funds flow measure. I haven't researched this measure's predictive accuracy yet.