Stock Investing

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  Show Me the Money: Tracing a Firm's Cash Flow

  The importance of knowing how company raises money and what they use it for.

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  Putting the Numbers to Work: The Magic of Ratios

  Ratio analysis relies on financial statements to study the past and develop a feel for a company's attractiveness.

Stock Investing Know-How

The Proxy Edge: Exercising Your Shareholder Rights

Corporate governance has been a hot button issue since the collapse of Adelphia, Enron, Worldcom and others. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is keeping the heat on public companies by requiring broader and deeper disclosure on how corporations are actually governed—most of which can be found in the proxy. If you wanted to find a company that was "ideally" governed in line with shareholders' interests, it would be the proxy statement that you would turn to for most of the information.

Unfortunately, many individual investors don't know what to do with the proxy statement—they don't know how to vote on certain issues, or feel that their votes do not count for much. Many shareholders simply toss their proxies in a file or, worse, the trash. But with it, they are throwing away their votes—and their shareholder right to keep management's interest in line with their own.

As a portfolio manager for a mutual fund, I read proxy statements carefully during my initial company analysis and on a regular basis once a position is taken. And, needless to...

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