"What's Behind the Numbers? A Guide to Exposing Financial Chicanery" | Talks at Google

About the book: Learn to detect corporate accounting sleight of hand: the aggressive accounting tactics companies use to make their numbers look better than they are, from "channel-stuffing" to inventory tricks. This knowledge lets you avoid the risk of investing your savings in companies that are playing with -- rather than by -- the numbers. The book also presents an integrated long-short investing strategy to take direct advantage of such shenanigans, but, whether you go all the way to a long-short portfolio, or just focus on avoiding landmine stocks that will blow a hole in your financial security, the book will help improve your investment approach. About the authors: John Del Vecchio is the cofounder and co-manager of The Active Bear ETF, a fund dedicated to shorting individual stocks with fundamental red flags. Previously, he managed a hedge fund for Ranger Alternative Management, L.P. In addition, he worked for well-known short seller David Tice and famed forensic accountant Dr. Howard Schilit. Del Vecchio co-advises the Motley Fool Alpha long-short newsletter. Tom Jacobs, Portfolio Manager of Motley Fool Special Ops, applies this book's earnings quality tests to his value and special situations long side to form a long-short portfolio. He is managing partner of holding company Complete Growth Investor, LLC, principal of The Marfa Group, Inc., and a real estate investor. This talk was hosted by Alex Martelli on behalf of Authors at Google.

Comments

1. anything that actually works in investing will not be taught or publicized and will cost you an arm and a leg to purchase if you find it
2. Brilliant talk, but after all the negativity Dow is close to 20K!!
3. Why is the Active Bear ETF near 52 week lows? 
4. is there any index that is constructed of dividend paying stocks?
5. Tough crowd, huh?
6. The majority of all studies? Eugene Fama, the father of efficient markets, admits himself that small caps and value stocks outperform.
7. Mark, absolutely, but the job world has so changed that people do not often have the option. Just one of many examples: I had just spent 2 weeks in So. Cal. presenting and listening to laid off tech workers >50 years, sitting on lump sums, for whom DCA was not an option, life-stage reasons. This was a wake up. As we closed with other data, dividends allow a kind of DCA and reinvestment that avoid inadvertent market timing and some drawdowns to a point. Can't ever cover a library in 45 mins :-)
8. If investors cannot muster the discipline to follow the rather simple task of dollar cost averaging there's no way they will ever master the much more complicated task of stock selection and timing.
9. The majority of "all" studies shows it doesn't work? If you've reviewed and understand all the studies that have been done about stock analysis, you must be an expert. But if you were an expert, you would know that stock pricing over the long term is not random. So your comment is contradictory. The author's reaction to this point during the Q&A was more defensive than it should have been. But that doesn't prove the random walk theory. If it did, people like Buffet wouldn't exist.
10. Ouch I just watched this part. It was a brutal takedown
11. accounting chicanery? That's something google is very good at isn't it? When are you going to pay UK taxes?
12. Hagmann and we agree: People should (yes!) dollar-cost index average, but then we disagree, because real people don't. See data, M* study, Nobelist Kahneman, AAII, Tweedy Browne's 50 studies, Efficient Market Theory's inventors Fama and French own data against EMT, Nobelist Lucas's (The Economist) sad ad hominem rebuttal. Real people use guns, cars, scissors, alcohol, pick stocks. So we offer risk mgmt. to real, not imaginary, people. That "most people" believe something does not make it true.
13. Thank you baby!
14. It is important to note that the whole talk is about stock picking. The majority of all studies indicate that this does not work. When looking at the stock market it shows that stocks evolve according to a random walk and thus the prices of the stock market cannot be predicted in advance. There is a question in the Q&A to this (57:36). Alas, the reaction from the two authors speaks for itself. IMHO your time is better invested watching the Google talk by Leonard Mlodinow (The Drunkard's Walk).
15. Worth watching if you're interested in investing.