Accounting ratios formed from financial statement data have been used in a variety of
contexts. One of the principle historical uses of accounting ratios has been in the area of
security analysis. Ratio-based security analysis is the subject of a growing, and contemporary,
body of academic research.2 Because of its broad appeal and relevance, and the
fact that it is the focus of so much current academic research, we chose security analysis
as the context in which to empirically test the utility of rank transformations. Specifically,
we examined whether ranked transformations of accounting ratios that proxy for risk
characteristics of firms are more strongly associated with stock returns, than either the
unranked ratios, square root, or logarithmic transformations of those ratios