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Seeing behind the magic a good start to investing

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP

Every retail investor believes he is knowledgable about the right place to put his money, that he knows the right companies to trust and he has done his homework about the stocks.

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But we all know that our investments can go up as well as down, especially in a bear market.

Even some of the most highly regarded financial analysts can be proved wrong, writes author Peter Temple.

Temple worked as a financial analyst for 18 years before turning to full-time writing in 1988 as a freelance journalist and author.

In the book he describes how every financial analyst worth his balance sheet makes a mistake about a company at one time or another. So do retail investors, mainly because they are unable to read the details of the company's accounts.

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He writes how a number of times readers of a financial statement or report are stumped by the technical jargon and fail to interpret a set of company accounts.

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