you said it best

"Oh well - no point getting sucked back into Mill's negative energy vortex."

I think your "red flags" are exactly the ones they taught me to look at when I took my CDN securities course. Analyzing company financials was a complete section in itself. Back in 1998/1999,we had to study the financials of Trimac and Laidlaw and justify why who was where in market cap and then tell who would still be around in the future. Really interesting section actually. IMHO