What are some common nuances retail investors overlook when researching stocks

Looking for tidbits of knowledge to help people (and myself) become more well rounded and educated investors, tips and tricks if you will.

For example, I learned a companies income can increase because they switched inventory costing from LIFO to FIFO, reducing COGS. Something like that may be easily overlooked by an untrained eye.

It can be company specific, like how some ev startups inflated pre-order numbers by accounting for “potential buyers” who may have just clicked on a car and added it to their cart.

I’ll accept macro-economic related facts too. housing prices aren’t included in CPI reports, but cars are.

I plan to hopefully aggregate this information in a useful and formatted way to share with you guys. Cheers