Task: Sentiment Analysis
Input (English): Still worth reading . 17 years later and many things have changed. The desire of investors to accurately gauge the stability of the companies in their portfolios remains the same. The incentive of management with stock options to hide the true nature of what the reality of what the company's earnings have been remains strong. Some of the techniques mentioned will be hard to use when companies employ SPEs to hide their true indebtedness and derivative positions mask the Value at Risk. However, many of the technique still have value. The analysis of receivables and inventories can provide insight into the immediate future of the company. The techniques that have lost their clear edge are the debt and write-off analysis. Write-offs are now required by GAAP (although the "big bath" write-offs are still "non-recurring") and SPEs or variable interest entities can obscure debt. It is fascinating in light of Enron, WorldCom, Qwest, Tyco, and Adelphia the stories of companies in the 70s and 80s that were attempting to do the same thing (though often without the fraud). How little man changes through the ages
Output (English): POS