Financial Fine Print is designed to help individual investors do a better job at navigating increasingly complicated financial statements and SEC filings. While the book was written in the wake of accounting scandals at Enron and Worldcom, Financial Fine Print gives investors the tools they need to make better, more informed investment decisions today.The book was written after Michelle Leder, a veteran business journalist, lost a chunk of her IRA by investing in Qwest Communications. As part of the learning process, Leder did a post-mortem and realized that instead of relying on happy talk from corporate executives and over-enthusiastic analysts, she should have spent her time reading the company’s SEC filings. In a little over an hour’s time, she found several red flags that pointed to overly aggressive accounting.

By using numerous examples of actual footnotes that have appeared in SEC documents, the book teaches investors in easy-to-understand language ways to spot - and avoid — potential problems. The book contains dozens of Search Tips and Red Flags that investors can use to spot questionable disclosures, no matter what type of company they’re investing in.

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Book Reviews

“Leder provides some state-of-the art research ideas in a very accessible way. This is a first book that is a winner. The “financial fine print” here is readable, useful, and potentially profitable!”
–Barron’s

“A must read for any investor serious about knowing what they own. With the help of some of the best financial detectives, Michelle Leder provides a roadmap for delving beneath the surface — where most investors dare not tread.”
--Herb Greenberg, Columnist, CBS Marketwatch

“Financial Fine Print belongs at your side before you read a company’s financial statement. It’s beautifully written, combining both warmth and clarity, and as easy to read as it is to understand. With a book as indispensable as this, there’s no longer any reasonable excuse to avoid wading into the thicket of footnotes before making financial decisions.”
–Angele McQuade, Better Investing magazine

“Obfuscators beware! Michelle Leder has cracked the code. In this invaluable guide to combing the footnotes of financial statements for indicators of accounting tricks and attempts to hide the bad news needles in a haystack of numbers. This is a clear, sensible, and above all practical guide that will be indispensable for anyone who invests in, does business with, or works for a corporation.”
–Nell Minow, editor, The Corporate Library