Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements: The Search for the Company with a Durable Competitive Advantage

by Mary Buffett and David Clark

Book Overview

With an insider's view of the mind of the master, Mary Buffett and David Clark have written a simple, easy-to-follow guide for reading financial statements from Warren Buffett's successful... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416573186
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Scribner
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.5" x 0.7" x 5.6"

Customer Reviews

Greatest investing book of all time

This book will help you identify great companies with a competitive advantage.

Very good basic information

As a professional investor, I found most of the information very basic; however, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. People tend to complicate things in life as well as in investing. Warren Buffett preaches investing in companies that possess moats and buying them when the price is reasonable. All this book is trying to do is to help investors assess a company's moat. No, this book alone will not assure investment success, but it adds another tool to the tool box that can help beginning or advanced investors successfully invest in the stock market. - 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

Primer on Buffett and Reading Financial Reports

Five stars for this book because it accomplishes what it intends to be, a simple primer on how Warren Buffett invests, which means reading financial reports for critical details that tell you the financial health of the company and from that understanding, where it is going in the future. The book features over 60 short chapters starting with Buffett's philosophy on investing for the long haul and then, in a very simple format, breaks down financial statements; income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements . The authors also explain key ratios that relate to performance such as gross profit to gross profit margin. The book also includes plenty of examples and a glossary all in less than 200 pages. Not for the accountant or someone well versed in stocks, but that's not the intended audience. For those interested in a reasonable introduction to smart investing, you can read the whole book on a three to four hour plane ride and you will see why companies like the auto industry struggle to make a profit. Of course Buffett's key, investing in companies with an incredible competitive advantage with low cost needs for retooling

Excellent Educational Resource

The book contains a very detailed approach to financial statement analysis for making investment decisions. However, it explains the detail in a practical/common sense manner, which makes it easy to read and easy to comprehend even for someone who is not familiar with financial statements. For someone who is familiar with financial statements, but doesn't know how to use them to make investment decisions, this is what they need to read. It will permanently change the way they review financial statements and the value they place on them.

Well done

Warren Buffet's performance over the course of his career has been simply incredible. At this late stage in the game, much is made of his unique prowess in extracting deals the ordinary investor could not possibly get. But what is frequently overlooked is that the man, with partner Charlie, spent decades doing a tough slog through fundamentals to research companies, industries and markets thoroughly to discover value. Finding value, they committed capital and waited, sometimes for years and years, for the payoff. The payoff nearly always came. As Mr. Buffett himself will tell you, however, this tough slog is nothing that any other ordinary investor cannot do. It takes discipline and patience. Buffett will direct you to Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor by Graham. But this book will help too. Being able to read and interpret financial statements is your starting point in analyzing a firm, in the way that a doctor starts by taking your height, weight, temperature and blood pressure. It's fundamental - you cannot do solid fundamental analysis without the ability to sit down with financial statements and build a model in your mind of the company and its financial situation. For anyone hoping to emulate some measure of Buffett's success, this book should sit alongside the ones by Graham.

A Buffet Primer

This is a well written study of financial statements, the Buffett way. The study is quite simplified but this is the beauty of the book. If you have little understanding of financial theorys you will find this the best books you could ever read. For those with a greater understanding of finance you will receive an added value in the detailed study of the way Mr. Buffett analysis's each and every step of a financial statement and what he feels is important and what is not. This is a book that I will keep in my financial group of readings and I am sure I will read excerpts over and over. Buy this book, it is a investment in your future.