Endeavour Silver (TSE:EDR) shareholders are still up 68% over 3 years despite pulling back 8.4% in the past week

By buying an index fund, you can roughly match the market return with ease. But if you choose individual stocks with prowess, you can make superior returns. For example, the Endeavour Silver Corp. (TSE:EDR) share price is up 68% in the last three years, clearly besting the market return of around 38% (not including dividends).

Since the long term performance has been good but there's been a recent pullback of 8.4%, let's check if the fundamentals match the share price.

See our latest analysis for Endeavour Silver

To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it's a weighing machine. 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.

During three years of share price growth, Endeavour Silver moved from a loss to profitability. That would generally be considered a positive, so we'd expect the share price to be up.

You can see how EPS has changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

We know that Endeavour Silver has improved its bottom line over the last three years, but what does the future have in store? This free interactive report on Endeavour Silver's balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

A Different Perspective

While the broader market gained around 20% in the last year, Endeavour Silver shareholders lost 21%. Even the share prices of good stocks drop sometimes, but we want to see improvements in the fundamental metrics of a business, before getting too interested. Regrettably, last year's performance caps off a bad run, with the shareholders facing a total loss of 1.4% per year over five years. Generally speaking long term share price weakness can be a bad sign, though contrarian investors might want to research the stock in hope of a turnaround. It's always interesting to track share price performance over the longer term. But to understand Endeavour Silver better, we need to consider many other factors. To that end, you should learn about the 4 warning signs we've spotted with Endeavour Silver (including 2 which don't sit too well with us) .

But note: Endeavour Silver may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with past earnings growth (and further growth forecast).

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on CA exchanges.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.