Financial Fine Print: Uncovering a Company's True Value

FINANCIAL FINE PRINT > --Herb Greenberg, Columnist, TheStreet.com and Fortune magazine > --Nell Minow, Editor, The Corporate Library "Too many companies would prefer that you not read the footnotes," observes former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt. "That should be incentive enough to delve into them." In fact, not only do companies prefer you ignore the details they are required to report--the pesky particulars on exactly how they account for those whopping earnings--they take calculated steps to make this information as hard as possible to understand. But for those who know how to look, the facts that predict a company's true prospects are usually hidden in plain sight. Financial Fine Print gives you the tools you need to break down annual reports and SEC filings, make sense of the deliberately cryptic language of footnotes, and get the real goods on a potential investment. To make money in today's tough market, investors have to make eliberate, well-researched choices. To do this requires not only having the right information, but also knowing how to decode it. With their obscuring tactics, companies won't help you any. So be advised: those who would help themselves--and expect to profit--should get down to the nitty-gritty of Financial Fine Print.

Foreword xi
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Don't Get Fooled Again 7
Chapter 2 Reading the Fine Print Like a Pro 19
Chapter 3 You Don't Need to Be a Pro 37
Chapter 4 Charge It! 49
Chapter 5 Optional Illusions 67
Chapter 6 All in the Family 85
Chapter 7 Pensions in Wonderland 103
Chapter 8 Debt by Many Other Names 125
Chapter 9 Five Common Ingredients 139
Chapter 10 Changing the World 153
A Few Final Words 163
Appendix A A Cheat Sheet for Reading Key SEC Filings 165
Appendix B A Brief Walk through Qwest's Fine Print 169
Notes 175
Index 183