In the context of quantitative analysis of the arbitrage pricing theory (APT) model, conventional factor analytic approaches such as maximum likelihood factor analysis (MLFA) cannot provide satisfactory answers to two important questions. The first one concerns the correct identification of factor number while the second one is related to the rotation indeterminacy of factor loadings. In the literature, MLFA followed by likelihood ratio (LR) test and the analysis of eigenvalues of sample covariance matrix were two popular approaches used to determine the appropriate number of factors. However, it was shown empirically that both of them suffered from different kinds of biases. We find the recently developed non-gaussian factor analysis (NFA) model by Xu [24] provides a new perspective for the determination of the appropriate factor number k in APT, with promising empirical results demonstrated.