Rating: 
Summary: Financial Fineprint
Review: Is there any way an ordinary investor can protect themselves from shady corporate accounting? YES!! Michelle Leder's book Financial Fineprint has given me the tools to become a better investor. Not only does she do an excellent job of breaking down annual reports and SEC filings in a very organized and clearly written manner , she also provides an invaluable service by guiding the reader through the footnotes of financial statements, pointing out indicators of accounting tricks and obscuring tactics. Ms. Leder gives the average investor the means to find out for themselves about the companies they invest with. I can now spot those Inflated profits, questionable related party transactions, hidden expenses, etc., before I decide to buy a particular stock. This book is not simply a "How to" book, however, as it is written in a more narrative and reader friendly style, with personal accounts and fun annecdotes. I highly reccomend this book for anyone who wants to have as much knowledge at their fingertips as possible before making important financial decisions.
Rating:
Summary: An individual investors' best friend
Review: The investment club that I'm in wound up losing a lot of money on Healthsouth, so we've been very cautious over the past year. But with the market rising, we know that all of this caution has wound up costing us money. Luckily, one of our members received Financial Fine Print as a Christmas present this year. Over the past month or so, this book -- now dog-eared -- has made its way to all 15 of us and we now feel as if we're better investors as a result. I finally decided to buy my own copy because I think it's one of the best books available for individual investors who are looking to do their own research on stocks. There's so many great examples of the sorts of things companies try to hide from their investors in their SEC filings -- information investors need to have before they put their money on the line. One of the things our group has done over the past month is to go back and look at Healthsouth's SEC filings to see if we would have made the same mistakes. Now armed with Ms. Leder's expert advice, we found numerous "red flags" that would have prompted us to sell the stock before Healthsouth's problems became so apparent. Yes, hindsight is always 20-20, so it's easy to say that now. But we all still feel that we've learned so much from this book that we can now invest with a lot more confidence, instead of being pre-occupied with the fear that we're buying another company that's much more interested in enriching its executives at the expense of their shareholders. Most of the other accounting-related books our group has read -- and we've read a bunch -- all seem to be aimed at a professional audience and can be a bit dry unless you're the type of person who thinks FASB is fascinating. Not this book. Using easy to understand language and examples that help you put the complicated accounting into perspective, this excellent book is an individual investor's best friend!
Rating: 
Summary: Engaging but lacking in specifics
Review: Very well written and a good read as far as financial books go. Focus is on investing time and effort in analyzing footnotes in 10K and 10Q statements, a much underappreciated aspect of finding good values and avoiding value pitfalls.
Although this book does great work in stressing the importance of this subject and works as an important motivator, it does not provide lay investor with any new tools or statistical guidelines to uncover a company's value.
Rating:
Summary: Scandalously good!
Review: When the corporate accounting scandals were coming fast and furious in the last two years, one seemed to quickly blur into another-- Enron, Adelphia, Rite-Aid, Tyco, Worldcom etc. etc.--until the whole thing was a steaming mass of financial ruin and wrongdoing beyond comprehension. Michelle Leder has plunged into that morass and come out with a book that that elucidates in clear, conversational prose how these companies bilked investors with a mind-boggling array of accounting shennanigans. Financial Fineprint decodes the arcane language and structure of securities filings to help individual investors spot the red flags that can help them avoid throwing money at the next Enron or Worldcom. Much of that trouble is hidden, of course, in the footnotes, which Leder puts under a powerful magnifying glass to reveal the perils within. I found the chapter on pensions especially eye-opening, a land of accounting make-believe unto itself. A must read for anyone who wants to understand where the money went during the 90s boom and how to avoid a repeat of financial disaster.
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