Do you want to be more confident and improve your investing decisions?
Do you want to do make in-depth research easier and more manageable?Yes?
Then race out to your nearest book store and get yourself a copy of The Investment Checklist.
Now.
While most of the investment book reviews from old school value has focused on financial statement analysis and stock valuation, The Investment Checklist is all about performing qualitative analysis. A perfect complement.
This book is loaded with tips on how to interpret qualitative aspects of a business and gives you real life examples. Combine that with the checklists it includes and this is a home run.
What’s In The Investment Checklist
The Investment Checklist contains strategies and a whole lot of questions that will help investors make educated investment decisions.It also includes a investment checklists that will help determine the value of a business for long-term investors and help them with sell decisions. It is good to note that many of the answers in the checklist are readily available from the SEC which makes research fast and easy.
The book is filled with case studies to help you understand the concepts, not to mention that the author holds some of the companies mentioned.
See below to see the chapter by chapter summary of the book.
Where The Investment Checklist Really Shines
Instead of getting into technical details, the book focuses on helping you understand how businesses operate and how to interpret it.For example, say you are looking at a company that has magnificent plans to increase sales by 100% in 3 years.
Here’s what the book has to say about that.
The strategic plans that are most prone to failure are those that have an overly narrow focus, such as those that set a financial target… However, what happens in most cases is that when the CEO focuses on a specific financial target, they neglect other area or take on more risk. The single plan will dominate all of the activities of the business at the expense of other important areas.Then it goes on to give case studies to prove the point. These are insights that you can only get from seasoned and experienced investors. You won’t be reading these types of insightful layers of commentary in the annual report or in a lunch room conversation.
Honey dripping awesomeness.
The Investment Checklist Chapter by Chapter Summary
Take a look through these chapters and see if you can find one that won’t help you out.Chapter 1 – Discusses a search strategy to help you increase the rate of finding investment ideas worth researching further.
Chapter 2 – Discusses business basics like what it does, how it earns money, how evolution affects it overtime, and geographical location that makes it money.
Chapter 3 – Helps you look at a business from a customer’s perspective and explains how important this insight is.
Chapter 4 – Evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of a business. Illustrates whether or not the business has a competitive advantage for the long term.
Chapter 5 – This is about the operational and financial health of a business. This chapter will help you look at the strengths and weaknesses of a business’ balance sheet. In addition, you will also be able to look at key risk factors and how inflation can affect the business.
Chapter 6 – Teaches you to look at the cash flow of the business. Is the company’s accounting strategy conservative or liberal? There is also the revenue of the business and its consistency during cycles and recessions.
Chapter 7 – Background information about the management team of the company. How they rose to power, quality of leadership, and how they are compensated.
Chapter 8 – This is more on the senior management leadership style, how they treat employees, how they look at costs, how they handle daily operations, and what their vision is for the long term.
Chapter 9 – Covers negative and positive traits of company management. Knowing the business management team is essential because you become silent partners when you buy the stock.
Chapter 10 – Looking into the future growth of a business. Is it growing organically? Has it always been profitable? Is it still growing? Does management grow the business in a disciplined way?
Chapter 11 – Look into the success and failures of mergers and acquisitions in the past and the present. This segment will help you answer the question of how management handles the decision on what company to merge with or to acquire.
Rating: Buy it Now (add echo effect)
The Investment Checklist isn’t cheap. It’s $30 something, but for $30 you’ll be getting an excellent ROI and you’ll be as impressed and get the itch to start applying like I did.This post was first published at old school value.
