Baby Steps of Financial Analysis

“An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operation not meeting these requirements are speculative” – Warren Buffet

Who said that finance is boring? It’s one of the things that I’m amused about right now. As many others, I thought that equity trading is like gambling. It’s not. And it’s fun. It’s one of the hot topics that I also talked about with my colleagues at Zynga over the lunch table.

I’m new in this world. I didn’t make any finance courses when I was at college or graduate school, so there’s quite bit of learning curve on terminologies. But it  wasn’t too difficult to figure out and understand. Another thing that I had to learn is understanding on how to read financials of a company: income statement, balance sheet, cash flows, etc. I’m still learning.

These are the area that I’m currently or going to be investing in:

• Technology
• Energy
• Consumer
• Retail
• Consumables

Warren Buffet is one of the gods in this area. As one of the richest person in the world, he is one of the most humble yet I known. I see him as the “Steve Jobs” on finance. And to get some shares of his fortunes, is not so cheap: