Jaroslav Tuček's Reviews > Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements: The Search for the Company with a Durable Competitive Advantage

Simplistic to the point of being insulting (they even have a chapter devoted to "proving" that the lower price you pay, the higher your yield), redundant and annoying in the frequency of use of phrases "Warren says", "Warren does" and "Warren thinks" -- it reads like a true pamphlet from a sect of zealots.

Most of the book gives basic definitions of accounting terms with some discussion of what to look for while identifying competitive advantage. There isn't much advice on actual valuations and investing strategy itself - and this is a good thing because where it is present, it is terrible and limited to platitudes such as "don't buy at the height of the bull market." It is ironic that the authors are so dismissive of Graham, and one has to wonder how much investing they have done themselves for otherwise they would know, as Graham taught, that the greatest obstacles to solid returns are psychological and the kind of advice given in the book not easily applicable to real life situations.

In any case, in the world of finance, one should be extremely wary of people he hears using words like "sure thing" or "make you superrich" - as this book does on every other page. Picking companies with competitive advantages seems easy when shown retrospectively on spectacular successes such as Coca-Cola. However, working without the hindsight advantage is much harder. Indeed, one of the examples in the book compares Apple and Microsoft and applauds MS's much higher gross margins. We all know how that "sure thing" worked out in the end.