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Title: Financial Shenanigans: How to Detect Accounting Gimmicks & Fraud in Financial Reports, Second Edition by Howard Schilit ISBN: 0-07-138626-2 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade Pub. Date: 01 March, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.13 (15 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Necessary Read for Any Serious Investor..
Comment: Is this book perfect? Of course not. But, it is a well-written, useful guide for anyone who wants to understand how companies continually mislead investors by using aggressive and sometimes fraudulant accounting. Schilit gives us tons of examples of different kinds of crooked accounting including improper capitalization of expenses, revenue acceleration, receivables collection, off-balance sheet debt, etc and reviews many classic accounting frauds like Boston Chicken, Enron, Rite-Aid, Informix, and MicroStrategy. This stuff isn't the good stuff that the CEO always talks about, but rather the fine print in tedious, long 10Ks and other SEC documents. While he is very brief and doesn't always cover all of the bases, he does more than enough to educate 99.999% of investors and make them smarter and more educated in the long-run. After reading this book, you will be a cynical investor and not take anything at face value. It's strange, but most investors never seem to learn from the same accounting tricks. One person said that this book is appropriate for a college freshman, which is absurd. You do need to know the basics before you delve into this book. Unless you have been investing for 20 years and know every single accounting fraud, this book is clearly worthwhile. As someone who works in the hedge fund business and remembers college, I can say with confidence that Schilit's book is a must-read and is great as a learning resource.
Rating: 3
Summary: A good read but..
Comment: Financial Shenanigans is written apparently with a popular audience in mind, but you really ought to have some previous experience in reading financial statements. Individual investors should should be practiced at researching firms with at least the resources available free/cheap on the web.
The book covers the same disasters as 2 or 3 others I've read, but is more subjective/judgemental in tone and less thorough. It also tends to sound like an promo for the author's business (research institute), where you get absolutely nothing for less than $300 (which works out to about $100/pg I think for reports.)
The book is also marred for non-professional readers by careless editing than left typos, misplaced phrases. A number of the tables for example financial statement analysis are riddled with what I imagine might be a spreadsheet font/formating problem that truncates 4 digit numbers to the left 3 digits. Most can be spotted by the form "x,xx" with the comma separator the clue, but three digit numbers chopped to two aren't so obvious, and to get the numbers to add up correctly you have to do a little tinkering to figure out which are missing a digit. Not critical, but very annoying, and doesn't look good for a book about meticulous ferreting out of subtle accounting ploys.
Still, it may help improve do-it-yourself research & analysis.
Rating: 5
Summary: CREATIVE ACCOUNTING 101
Comment: FINANCIAL SHENNANIGANS How to Detect Accounting Gimmicks & Fraud in Financial Reports 2nd Edition - Howard Schilit
Former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt once noted that the investment markets exist through the "grace" of investors. That grace is a fragile trust easily undermined by intentional distortions of the financial performance of publicly reporting companies. Those distortions that erode investor confidence are author Howard Schilit's 'Shenanigans'. The infractions described range from benign to aggressive to outright fraudulent and Schilit is always ready with the specifics of companies who have demonstrated an excess of creativity in their arithmetic. It should be said that the information in this book is very accessible to the non-accountant. This is an illuminating read. A brief accounting tutorial in the Appendix is almost worth the price of admission. Serious investors should read this book. The "seven financial shenanigans" Schilit discusses at length are painfully familiar to portfolio owners. They are clearly explained and amply exampled. Reading this book may or may not provide an investor with the expertise to prevent a future mistake, but it will certainly add to an appreciation of the seriousness of issues as they surface in the financial media.
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Title: The Financial Numbers Game: Detecting Creative Accounting Practices by Charles W. Mulford, Eugene E. Comiskey ISBN: 0471370088 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 18 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Quality of Earnings by Thornton L. O'glove ISBN: 0684863758 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.75 |
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Title: Financial Statement Analysis: A Practitioner's Guide, 3rd Edition by Martin Fridson, Fernando Alvarez, Martin S. Fridson ISBN: 0471409154 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 15 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $69.95 |
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Title: The Art of Short Selling by Kathryn F. Staley, Marketplace Books ISBN: 0471146323 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: January, 1997 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings by Philip A. Fisher ISBN: 047111927X Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: May, 1996 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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