Case studies from Security Analysis
While reading the Security Analysis by Ben Graham I was astonished by the stupidity of some accounting errors and intentional misguidance. At the same time while reading different financial reports for different companies in various industries it was very hard for me to notice any big irregularities like those mentioned by Graham. Is it because companies rarely do such huge misconducts and Graham pointed out the few cases he stumbled upon or because it is very hard for me to spot them? Another part of the question is how can I spot the same errors that Graham spotted during his analysis. I mean, the financial reports are sometimes so vague that is very hard to understand was it an impairment of inventories or was it just an increase in sales of those inventories. I am still learning how to analyse a company report, but it seems that so far I wasn't able to see anything special in them. (any suggestions for further reading on this topic will be greatly appreciated). Thanks