Analysis

My recent bedtime reading is Guide to Analyzing Companies by Bob Vause.

Oh, I'm not going to quit my job. Nonetheless, it is usually a good idea to broaden your view and see things from a different angle.

You may ask, "Didn't you learn reading the financial report and all these some years ago?"

Yes, quite true. But, like the practice of medicine, you need to regularly revise your skill - especially if you do not use it very often.

And, like many aspects of medicine, I study a subject not because I am going to use it, but because I wish to have a better understanding how other people in the field think and act. For example, in finance, we need to understand how the "experts" valuate a company - not because that reflects the true value, but, as George Soros pointed out, in the stock market, when everyone believes in something, that something will happen.

And, in medicine, it helps a lot when you have to communicate with colleagues from other specialties (which is very often), and help you to avoid being fooled (which is not all that rare).

PS. Seriously, the book is not all that easy to follow by a layman, for whom I would recommend Peter Lynch's One Up on Wall Street, or Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor.

PPS. From an entertainment point of view, the second half of Graham and Dodd's Security Analysis is way better - I used to call it The Encyclopedia of Fraud.