I'm a finance student and I recently made a DCF model so I could stray away from plain Excel. I built it for my investment club pitch, then ran it on four companies. All four came out well below their market price, and I'm trying to figure out if that's a real signal or a problem with my model.

Assumptions:

• Base year: calendar 2025, rebuilt from quarterly SEC filings (Apple and Micron have September fiscal years)
• 2026E and 2027E growth: Yahoo Finance analyst averages, then my own judgment
• Risk-free rate 5.19% (10-year Treasury), equity risk premium 4.5%, tax rate 21%
• Betas: Apple 1.1, Amazon 1.3 (regression gave 1.5), Tesla 1.8, Micron 1.6 (regression gave 2.35, inflated by the 2026 memory surge)

I didn't tune any inputs to close the gap, I just used a standard template. So my questions:

1. Is a 5.19% risk-free rate plus a 4.5% ERP too harsh for mega caps right now? Would you use a lower ERP or a normalized rate?
2. For Micron, should I trust the regression beta or adjust it? And how do you value a cyclical stock in what might be a peak year?
3. Apple needing an 85% margin seems crazy. Is that a sign my terminal value is off, or is the market just paying for something a DCF doesn't capture?

Any feedback is appreciated, I'm still learning!

And yes, I know some people say DCFs are not the best tool out there. Lmk if anyone wants to see the tool.