Don't Get Scammed by Financial Engineering This Earnings Season

Wall Street is playing a game with your money. And just about everyone on the Street is in on it... Analysts, financial media, data compilers, CEOs are all working in concert to obscure the information you need to make the most fundamentally important investment decision of all: to buy or to sell. The game is "hide the earnings," and, naturally, its sole purpose is to make corporate earnings look better (often a lot better) than they actually are. After all, central banks, macro events, and existential crises all impact share prices, but it's earnings that really drive them. If it all sounds like a con, well... it is. A perfectly legal one, pulled off with "creative accounting" that puts dubious non-GAAP earnings ahead of consistent, reliable generally accepted accounting principles-derived earnings. So today, I'm going to name names and tell you about one of the biggest culprits this earnings season. And, since it's very likely you own these shares, I'm going to show you a really simple calculation you can use to get to the truth, because you certainly can't expect it from Wall Street... Tags: earnings To get full access to all Money Morning content, click here About Money Morning: Money Morning gives you access to a team of ten market experts with more than 250 years of combined investing experience – for free . Our experts – who have appeared on FOXBusiness, CNBC, NPR, and BloombergTV – deliver daily investing tips and stock picks, provide analysis with actions to take, and answer your biggest market questions. Our goal is to help our millions of e-newsletter subscribers and Moneymorning.com visitors become smarter, more confident investors. Disclaimer: © 2016 Money Morning and Money Map Press. All Rights Reserved. Protected by copyright of the United States and international treaties. Any reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, including the world wide web), of content from this webpage, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of Money Morning. 16 W. Madison St. Baltimore, MD, 21201. The post Don't Get Scammed by Financial Engineering This Earnings Season appeared first on Money Morning - We Make Investing Profitable .