Take on the Street; What Wall Street and Corporate America Don't Want You to Know: What You Can Do to Fight Back
New York: Pantheon Books, 2002. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. x, 338, [2] pages. Signed by the author (Arthur Levitt) on the title page. Includes Acknowledgments, Introduction, Appendix: Power Games, Glossary, and Index. Also includes chapters on How to Sleep as Well as Your Broker; The Seven Deadly Sins of Mutual Funds, Analyze This. Reg FD: Stopping the Flow of Inside Information; The Numbers Game; Beware False Profits: How to Read Financial Statements; Pay Attention to the Plumbing; Corporate Governance and the Culture of Seduction; How to Be a Player; and Getting Your 401(k) in Shape. At once anecdotal, informative, and prescriptive, this book expounds on, among other subjects: the relationship between broker compensation and your trading account; the conflicts of interest inherent in buy-hold-or-sell recommendations of analysts; what exactly happens--and who gets a piece of the action--when you place an order; the "seven deadly sins" of mutual funds; the vagaries and vicissitudes of 401(k) investments; how accountants engage in slight of hand to fake impressive company performance; how to find the truth in a company's financial statements; the real reason for the Street's hostility to full disclosure; the crisis in corporate governance, and, given these shenanigans and double-dealings, what specific steps you can take to safeguard your financial future. With integrity and authority, Levitt gives us a bracing primer on the collapse of the system for overseeing our capital markets, and sage, essential advice on a discipline we often ignore to our peril--how not to lose money. More