by Charles W. Mulford, Eugene E. Comiskey
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Product Description
Praise for The Financial Numbers Game
"So much for the notion 'those who can, do-those who can't, teach.' Mulford and Comiskey function successfully both as college professors and real-world financial mercenaries. These guys know their balance sheets. The Financial Numbers Game should serve as a survival manual for both serious individual investors and industry pros who study and act upon the interpretation of financial statements. This unique blend of battle-earned scholarship and quality writing is a must-read/must-have reference for serious financial statement analysis."
-Bob Acker, Editor/Publisher, The Acker Letter
"Wall Street's unforgiving attention to quarterly earnings presents ever-increasing pressure on CFOs to manage earnings and expectations. The Financial Numbers Game provides a clear explanation of the ways in which management can stretch, bend, and break accounting rules to reach the desired bottom line. This arms the serious investor or financial analyst with the healthy skepticism required to drive beyond reported results to a clear understanding of a firm's true performance."
-Mark Hurley, Managing Director, Training and Development Global Corporate and Investment Banking, Bank of America
"After reading The Financial Numbers Game, I feel as though I've taken a master's course in financial statement analysis. Mulford and Comiskey's latest book should be required reading for anyone who is serious about fundamentally analyzing stocks."
-Harry Domash, Investing Columnist, San Francisco Chronicle and Publisher, Winning Investing
The Financial Numbers Game identifies the steps businesses may take to misstate financial performance and helps its readers to identify those situations where reported results may not be what they seem.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Specifics on detecting accouting issues, 2009-11-12
Though I agree with many of the other reviewers that parts of the book were redundant and focused too much on basic accounting, this is one of the first books I have read that provided very specific instruction on how to detect accounting irregularities. Most authors give an overview of what companies do, but this book gives you step-by-step on how to test a company's financials. For example, Chapter 11 identifies the ratio of adjusted cash flow from continuing operations to adjusted income from continuing continuing operations as being sensitive to earnings changes. It goes on to explain how or where to find this information and how to apply it over several periods to be able to detect a trend, which may or may not indicate earnings manipulation. This level of information provides a financial analyst with the tools to be able to test and potentially identify accounting issues.
There were many key financial areas were not addressed and the text book feel made it difficult to read too many pages at one time. However, the nuggets of valuable information on the specifics of detection techniques made it a worth-while read.
John W. Taylor
Tiarta L.L.C.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Tough to read but valuable, 2009-08-12
I am surprised to see all the negative reviews about this book because I found it valuable. No single book or resource gives an investor everything he or she needs to know to be successful. I personally read maybe over 300 books on investing and still learned from this book. It is another tool to add to the tool box. This book helps readers identify places where the management may be too aggressive or borderline illegal with financial reporting. I believe that this book, along with Financial Shenanigans and Creative Cash Flow Reporting, should be on the shelves of serious investors.
- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Very good stuff but also painful to read, 2009-04-21
There is a lot of great material in this book for investors but there are also serious flaws with the organization and presentation of the book. The book reads more like a textbook for an MBA or accounting school. The advantage of the format is that each chapter can be read out of order. One could also read the chapters that sound interesting. Each chapter is followed by a summary, glossary and bibliography. I read/skimmed all the chapters and I must admit that I did not have fun while doing it. As much as I hate skimming books, I just could not bring myself to read everything as presented due to two main problems with the book.
First, the book is ridiculously redundant and poorly written. There is redundancy within chapters and also among chapters. When you reach a point that has already been made, the temptation to skim or even better to skip is just too great to pass. Unfortunately when you skip then it's hard to know when to start reading carefully again. I wish I had the patience and endurance to have read it all, but what I can I say ... I just could not do it.
Second, the book is filled with numerous examples many of which add nothing to the author's point. I would have preferred fewer examples but more in depth analysis. It was way too wordy.
With a better editor and better organization this book could be cut to one third its current length and be made into a huge gem. In its current form, I still recommend the book to patient readers. You can also extract a lot of value out of it by selectively skipping and skimming parts as I did.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Bad editor + basic material = poor investment, 2006-07-16
I thought this was going to be a penetrating, incisive look at financial statement chicanery -- instead I got a recap of things I already learned in HOWARD SCHLIT's (better edited, clearer) book.
Most of what is in this book is either a) something you already know or b) material you can get for free on the web (investopedia.com tutorials, etc). Given the fact that the book's authors are well-known names in the field, I expected much more from this offering. Save your money...
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Financial Numbers Game, 2006-05-04
The book is fine for those not informed on the topic of financial reports, but those that have some insight on that topic would find it boring and not as informative as expected.
I also found several issues repeated, and other topics just to vague to be of much use.
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