Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet: The Search for Financial Reality
How can an investor protect his or her stock portfolio? How can an analyst make accurate projections on a company's financial health? Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet: The Search for Financial Reality guides business professionals including corporate financial analysts, practicing accountants, credit analysts, institutional and individual investors, money managers, and commercial bank lenders through the maze of potentially misleading earnings and accounting disclosures to search for financial reality.With keen insight and state-of-the-art analytical tools, Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet deftly guides the wise investor or analyst on how to best assess corporate financial status and make better financial decisions by recognizing companies with poor and deceptive disclosure practices. This eye-opening book arms the reader with an earnings magic detection strategy that reveals how—and why—corporations "fudge" their numbers and explores the factors that point to potentially low earnings.Author Gary Giroux pulls back the curtain to show how big companies—even in the shadow of changes since the Enron and WorldCom financial fiascos and congressional hearings leading to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002—still use dubious financial maneuvers to manipulate the bottom line and overstate revenue. For the investor who wants to avoid financial losses—and which investor doesn't?—this is required reading on the best way to research and read financial reports. Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet: The Search for Financial Reality shows you how to:Establish a basic overview strategyThoroughly review the firm's prevailing financial environmentKnow the background essential for in-depth analysis including corporate governance, the regulatory environment, the tools available for analysis, and the incentives of major playersMake the most of sources of financial data including a company's annual and quarterly reports and proxy statementAccess public information on companies via a wealth of Internet toolsFinancial deceptions, such as inflated revenues and hidden expenses that are difficult to detect, still takes place in corporations despite new regulations designed to make financial information more reliable and oversight more extensive. Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet equips readers to identify the early warning signs of a company's problems, determine its financial transparency, and estimate its financial reality.