Bazaar Intermediate
You own a few shares. Now learn to judge them.
Reading annual reports, the handful of ratios that do most of the work, and how to look at a price chart without fooling yourself.
Reading a company
The documents a company must publish, and the handful of numbers inside them that matter.
2 of 4 written- 1.1 How to read an annual report without falling asleep
A listed company's annual report runs 200 to 400 pages, and most of it is there to be skipped. The order to read it in, the six pages that matter, and the warning signs that sat in Satyam's reports before anyone looked.
- 1.2 P/E, P/B and ROE: three ratios that do most of the work
You do not need forty ratios. You need three, the arithmetic that connects them, and a list of the ways each one lies. With a worked example and the questions to ask before trusting any number an app shows you.
- 1.3 The cash flow statement, line by line
- 1.4 Reading a quarterly results presentation without being sold to
Judging a business
Why some companies keep earning well for decades and most do not.
- 2.1 Moats: telling a good business from a lucky one
- 2.2 Sectors and cycles: why steel and software are different animals
- 2.3 Management quality: what to look for and what to ignore
Price and timing
What a price chart can and cannot tell you, and the hardest decision of all.
1 of 3 written- 3.1 Candlesticks, volume and trend: reading a price chart for the first time
A chart is a record of what other people paid, nothing more. How to read one candle, why volume tells you more than most lines, what a trend is, and SEBI's own numbers on how intraday traders actually do.
- 3.2 When to sell: the good reasons and the one bad one
- 3.3 Valuation through a cycle: cheap at the top, dear at the bottom
Derivatives, risk and tax: the parts that cost people money.