The poll I ran a while ago on 10-Ks didn’t get many takers, but I decided this might be a useful enough topic to write about anyway. It turns out, I think, that unless they’ve had a business school education or worked in finance, most people find 10-Ks intimidating, boring, and unappealingly long documents. That might seem to be the case, but they’re chock full of information on a company and well worth reading before choosing to invest money in the company’s stock. Even if you don’t know what all of the terminology means, or how to calculate financial ratios, you can get a good idea of what the company does, what risks there might be to its operations, and what plans management have in mind.

What are 10-Ks?
10-Ks are documents that the SEC requires that each and every publicly-traded company file at the end of their fiscal year. They’re also sometimes called annual reports, though I tend to think of these as the nice fancy books that come with the 10-Ks that the company mails out each year that do more highlighting and marketing of the company than anything else. Companies are required to mail you these documents (physically or, sometimes, electronically) if you own even one share of their stock, but if you’re looking at potential companies to invest in, you’ll find these easily accessible at either EDGAR or the company’s own website. Yahoo! Financials also links to a company’s most recent SEC filings, and their interface is a little easier to use and read.

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From the frugality-be-damned part of the world and the WSJ comes news that fancy and unique business cards — we’re talking silk and wood materials — are the new fad in executive life. Their purpose appears to be mainly for paper companies to continue to compete in a world of electronic address books and high-tech PDAs. Having never owned a business card in my life, even a plain and basic one issued by the corporation, and even as a professional, I can’t say I’ll be buying. But I know of many who’ll gladly plop down money to use it as a way to define their uniqueness. What do you think?

In the past 10 years, the increase in female employment in developed economies has contributed more to global growth than China. Does that surprise you? “A guide to womenomics”, an article in this week’s Economist magazine (4/15/2006), highlights the positive and impactful role of women’s participation in many things economics, financial, and corporate. Some of the other interesting (and perhaps controversial) items mentioned:

• A basket of Japanese stocks selected by Goldman Sachs because they ought to benefit from women’s greater purchasing power outperformed the Tokyo stockmarket 96% to 13% over 10 years

• Corporations with more women in senior positions earn a higher ROE than those that have fewer
• A study by Digital Look found that women make better investors than men
• Countries with higher female employment rates have higher fertility rates than those with lower participation
• The best way to boost prosperity in developing countries is to educate girls

This article is sure to draw letters from readers in forthcoming issues. I love articles that question mainstream thought and am a woman in finance myself.

But with so many of the items above mentioned just in passing in the article, I really would have liked to have seen references and details on the specific studies and points mentioned in the footnotes, especially coming from the Economist.

Description: A simple MS Excel template (Office 2003) you can use to calculate CAGR given initial investment, ending investment, and # of years of investment, or ending investment or # of years of required investment given the other three inputs. To download this spreadsheet, right click on this link and choose “Save target as…” or “Save link as…” from the menu items. Read the rest of this entry »