Good metrics are well-defined formulae (often involving averaging) that transmute multiple measures of raw numerical performance (e.g., dollar sales, referrals, number of customers) to create informative summary statistics (e.g., average share of wallet, average customer tenure). Despite myriad...

We evaluate whether stock prices can predict the sales takeoff and the long-term survival of firms at takeoff. We find that abnormal returns are strongly positive in the year prior to takeoff, thus suggesting an important signal of the takeoff. Moreover, we find that negative abnormal returns in...