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Introduction to Financial Statements

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Financial statements are the language of business. We will look at income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements.

What you will learn

  • The Income Statement
  • The Balance Sheet
  • The Statement of Cash Flows

What do you know?

Introduction to Financial Statements

Although the words financial statements and accounting send cold shivers down many people’s backs, this is the language of business, a language investors need to know before buying stocks. The beauty is you don’t need to be a CPA to understand the basics of the three most fundamental and important financial statements: the income statement, the balance sheet, and the statement of cash flows. All three of these statements are found in a firm’s annual report, 10-K, and 10-Q filings.

The financial statements are windows into a company’s performance and health. We’ll provide a very basic overview of each financial statement in this lesson.