How to Read A Financial Report
Author: John A. Tracy
List Price: $19.95
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ISBN: 0471327069
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (22 February, 1999)
Sales Rank: 3,725
Average Customer Rating: 4.18 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 4 out of 5
Simple and to the point
John Tracy does an excellent job of reviewing the basics of reading a financial report. His treatment of how the Balance Sheet, Income, and Cash Flow Statements are related to each other is simple and to the point. He also discusses how various depreciation and inventory methods impact the financial reports. The book is easy to read and well organized. Anyone who is new to financial reports or who wants to brush up on financial reports since their accounting days in college should find this book useful.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Well Written Overview of Financial Statements and Accounting
This book is great for anyone ranging from beginner to intermediate knowledge of financial reports. I have taken accounting and finance classes in college. This book tells the same things that 600 page textbooks and hours and hours of lecture can tell you, but it does so in an easy to understand and concise manner. Most important it explains the relationships clearly between the income statement, balance sheet, and cashflow statement. This book would be great for anyone starting an education in finance or for any investor trying to broaden their knowledge base. If you invest in stocks, you should learn how to read financial statements. This book will give you some much needed knowledge that you can use as you scour for companies to invest in.
This author takes pride in his writing. John A. Tracy is a professor of accounting, but his knack for concise explanations and the clear use of the English language is evident throughout.
Rating: 1 out of 5
disappointed
John Tracy does explain the 3 important "sheets" of a complete financial report. But he failed to help me understand what can be ascertained from more abstract concepts like cash flow or depreciation. His (lack of decent) explanation of why depreciation expense shows up in cost flow calculation appears to account twice for the same $ (once in profit and once in cash flow). His explanation of trying to use EPS & P/E ratio to determine the value of a privately held company share went no futher than this: "you could try to sell my your privately held share at any price you want, but I wouldn't have to accept it". That's not an explanation, just a statement of the obvious. The book needs more prose and examples of how the concept of a healthy (or unhealthy) company can be determined from a financial report. In fairness to Tracy, perhaps the latter half of the book addresses my needs, but I quit at page 76 (1/2 way through the book) after an inadequate explanation of depriciation expense as positive cash flow. I'll give another, more rigourous text a chance at that. Similar Products
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Book Index