With the numerous education books out there, I realise none actually teaches someone on how to read an Annual Report. This question struck me when I was teaching a friend on how to go about investing. We can break the investment process down into 3 steps. One, you have an idea. Two, you analyse it. Three, you decide whether to buy the stock. The hard part came when I was trying to teach the analysing part, which mainly consist of dissecting the Annual Report.

Every company is different. Other than telling them to read the Annual Report, what else is there to be said?

Read it more than once

It may seem rather duh that we should be reading an Annual Report more than once. However, what I meant is to read the whole thing straight through first. Reason being, by reading it straight through first, it forms the context in the next ...