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Getting Started in Fundamental Analysis
If you've picked up this book, you probably recognize the value of fundamental analysis, but aren't sure you can master it. With Getting Started in Fundamental Analysis as your guide, you'll quickly become familiar with the key concepts and learn how to put them into action in the real world. You'll gain important insights that can help you manage risk and make more informed investment decisions and learn from relevant illustrations, examples, and definitions. Written in a non-technical format that's easy to follow, Getting Started in Fundamental Analysis provides valuable coverage More than an introduction to fundamental analysis, this book will help you use analytical tools in identifying risk levels, making valid and reliable comparisons, and picking stocks for your portfolio so you develop a successful and profitable investment program.
240 pages, Paperback
First published April 21, 2006
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42 people want to read
About the author
Michael C. Thomsett
181 books13 followersMichael C. Thomsett is an expert in technical analysis and stock markets. He has published dozens of books on the topic as well as peer-reviewed papers, magazine articles, and blog entries. He has been writing professionally since 1978 and his best-selling, Getting Started in Options (John Wiley & Sons) is currently in its 10th edition (published by DeGruyter with a new title, “Options”) and has sold over 350,000 copies. The author lives near Nashville, Tennessee and he writes full time.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 7, 2021
This is a 2006 primer for analyzing stocks.
This was written at an interesting time: 2006 was AFTER the big scandals at Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco, and after passage of Sarbanes-Oxley -- so that gave Thomsett much to discuss. Yet this was BEFORE the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, the housing crash, Bernie Madoff and all that, and nothing in here would much help you see that coming. It's not this book's purposes to discuss home prices, or mortgage-based derivatives or credit default swaps, or picking a money manager, but it's interesting that he warns against false consistency in a company's financial reports -- where unrealistic consistency was the most obvious tell that Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzie scheme, if one had thought of making that analogy.
As might be expected of a 15-year-old book, pretty much all the online resources Thomsett refers to either no longer exist, no longer provide the information they did in 2006, or no longer do so for free. This is not the book to find a good list of current resources.
It's an odd mix of hard-core analytical training and obvious fluff, such as: "The purpose of analyzing annual reports is twofold. First, you need to confirm existing trends for stocks you are following or that you own. Second, you want to look for eliminating factors for stocks you are thinking of purchasing." Anyone buying THIS book probably already pretty well gets that, doesn't have to be told, and is here to learn what exactly to analyze in the annual report data. And multiple times he feels it necessary to reiterate that the change in dollars of a stock price is not as important as the PERCENT change in price (um thanks, Mr. Science). Thomsett promotes some analytical processes that I think are overly and unnecessarily complicated, then spends a page elaborating on the obvious arithmetic of the PE ratio.
But finally I'll give him credit for one thing: here in 2006, Thomsett makes repeated references to the trouble GM was in and how it had severely negative net worth if off-balance sheet problems like pension liabilities were considered. This wasn't obvious to everyone in 2006 -- Certainly not to GM management -- although I was aware of it at the time thanks to a blog called 'The Truth About Cars' I used to follow, and its lively "GM Deathwatch" feature. Sure enough three years later GM filed for bankruptcy and would have ceased to exist entirely if not for a taxpayer bailout.
This was written at an interesting time: 2006 was AFTER the big scandals at Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco, and after passage of Sarbanes-Oxley -- so that gave Thomsett much to discuss. Yet this was BEFORE the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, the housing crash, Bernie Madoff and all that, and nothing in here would much help you see that coming. It's not this book's purposes to discuss home prices, or mortgage-based derivatives or credit default swaps, or picking a money manager, but it's interesting that he warns against false consistency in a company's financial reports -- where unrealistic consistency was the most obvious tell that Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzie scheme, if one had thought of making that analogy.
As might be expected of a 15-year-old book, pretty much all the online resources Thomsett refers to either no longer exist, no longer provide the information they did in 2006, or no longer do so for free. This is not the book to find a good list of current resources.
It's an odd mix of hard-core analytical training and obvious fluff, such as: "The purpose of analyzing annual reports is twofold. First, you need to confirm existing trends for stocks you are following or that you own. Second, you want to look for eliminating factors for stocks you are thinking of purchasing." Anyone buying THIS book probably already pretty well gets that, doesn't have to be told, and is here to learn what exactly to analyze in the annual report data. And multiple times he feels it necessary to reiterate that the change in dollars of a stock price is not as important as the PERCENT change in price (um thanks, Mr. Science). Thomsett promotes some analytical processes that I think are overly and unnecessarily complicated, then spends a page elaborating on the obvious arithmetic of the PE ratio.
But finally I'll give him credit for one thing: here in 2006, Thomsett makes repeated references to the trouble GM was in and how it had severely negative net worth if off-balance sheet problems like pension liabilities were considered. This wasn't obvious to everyone in 2006 -- Certainly not to GM management -- although I was aware of it at the time thanks to a blog called 'The Truth About Cars' I used to follow, and its lively "GM Deathwatch" feature. Sure enough three years later GM filed for bankruptcy and would have ceased to exist entirely if not for a taxpayer bailout.
June 23, 2014
This book is amazing. The author really let things clear in it.
The content is basic but worth to give it a try.
The content is basic but worth to give it a try.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews