please look it up. Yes many people use it as a tool but before...

please look it up. Yes many people use it as a tool but before you say it as unimportant you should understand what it is.

it is what the company has earned on current SP during the last year. So for Lynas they have made 0.4% on the current stock price during the last year. Would you put your money in a bank account earning 1/2 % a year? Now H2 2020 was a very bad half for Lynas they loss lots of money from shut downs and falling REEO prices. H1 2021 was much better. PEs right now are at historical highs Reason since 2008 banking crisis Governments have held interest rates low to stimulate economies. Up till covid this has actually worked well and did not cause inflation.

IT is JMO but the huge amount of money pumped into economies world wide will cause inflation. The only effective tool to combat inflation is interest rates. When interest rates go up PEs and stock prices will go down. Forward looking PE is the same as regular PE but instead of looking back a year it is what analyst see as the PE looking forward a year or two. . Between these two you can tell how much a company will increase in book value in the future. If that is not important to you I would like to know what is?

Yes PE gets warped at times. Like Lynas's is artificially high right now because of the very bad results for 2020. So you cannot take a snap shot of PE and say Company is good or bad. Again using knowledge about the company I cannot think of any better measurement. With The AR in August I expect Lynas's PE to drop to mid 30s. Depending what happens it could jump up to over 50 possible 100 by the time of SAR. it is dynamic and many factors have to be guessed at to give it meaning. What is more important than earnings and stock price to you? Other things are important but for most investors this is # 1. Even if you don't believe they are correct you should understand what others are looking at.