Industry structure sets the ceiling: rivalry and the top-four concentration ratio over a decade, entry barriers that money alone cannot buy, supplier and buyer power, and substitutes including the do-nothing option.
The capital cycle is the most useful lens for both sides. High returns attract capital, capital builds capacity, capacity crushes prices, returns collapse, capital exits, capacity retires and scarcity returns. It runs on two-to-four-year lags in physical industries and is readable in advance from capex announcements, equipment order books and permits. The long side looks expensive on trough earnings; the short side looks cheap on peak earnings, with the supply schedule public.
An interactive sector finder covers software, banks, insurance, REITs, retail, industrials, semiconductors, energy, mining, pharma, airlines and utilities — the metrics that actually move the multiple in each, with the long profile and the short profile side by side.
Educational, not investment advice.