121: Red Lines, Accounting Gimmicks and Management Gloss: Why You Need to Understand Balance Sheets to Avoid Portfolio Disasters (With Steve Clapham, Founder of Behind the Balance Sheet)

121: Red Lines, Accounting Gimmicks and Management Gloss: Why You Need to Understand Balance Sheets to Avoid Portfolio Disasters (With Steve Clapham, Founder of Behind the Balance Sheet)

For all the narratives around investing and making money, those who have survived the investment cycles for decades and earned above average returns have typically adhered to sound disciplines.

This means valuing companies correctly, not taking shortcuts, not being swayed by management ebullience, and digging into the financial statements is key to optimising returns.

In this episode, Steve Clapham, veteran analyst, investor and creator of Behind the Balance Sheet explains why effective investment training has diminished, and how reading accounts is more important than ever in an era of waning cheap money.

Steve shares his candid thoughts on the CFA and explains why the cash flow statements are so vital.

He then explains why opportunities on the buy-side are increasingly plentiful, before covering a few case studies of 'creative accounting' (including two recent high profile fraud scandals: Patisserie Valerie and Wirecard).

​​The Money Maze Podcast is kindly sponsored by Schroders, Bremont Watches, LiveTrade and IFM Investors.

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FURTHER RESOURCES
To help improve your equity analysis and access world-class training videos, consider signing up to Steve’s Analyst Academy Course. As a festive thank you, he’s offering Money Maze Podcast listeners a 10% discount on the acclaimed course. At checkout, add the code ‘MMP10’ to enjoy the Black Friday discount. Learn more and sign up here! (Offer ends on December 15th 2023).

Steve also runs the Behind the Balance Sheet Newsletter. It aims to expose as many people as possible to equity investing, sharing analysis to improve your investing skills, backed by his 25+ year institutional career. Steve is kindly also offering listeners a 30% discount on the newsletter via this link!

Episoder(231)

189: From Vision to Valuation: Disrupting the Future - With Cathie Wood, Founder & CEO of ARK Invest

189: From Vision to Valuation: Disrupting the Future - With Cathie Wood, Founder & CEO of ARK Invest

When we interviewed Howard Marks in March of 2025, he observed, “It's the pioneers who get the arrows”. Many consider a 21st century investment pioneer to be Cathie Wood. She embraces disruptive inno...

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188: Yield, Shield, and Scale: Inside the Ares Management Playbook (With Blair Jacobson, Co-President)

188: Yield, Shield, and Scale: Inside the Ares Management Playbook (With Blair Jacobson, Co-President)

Ares is recognised as one of the leading global alternative investment managers, investing across credit, real estate, private equity and infrastructure.Listed on the NYSE, it has over 4,000 employees...

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187: Investing & Philanthropy - With Sir Chris Hohn, Founder, TCI Fund Management & CIFF

187: Investing & Philanthropy - With Sir Chris Hohn, Founder, TCI Fund Management & CIFF

In September we held our inaugural Money Maze Allocator Summit and over the two days there was fantastic discussion, debate, insights, disagreement and a lot of learning. It proved incredibly popular...

13 Nov 202549min

186: Rare Earths, Energy, and the Green Agenda (Money Maze Allocator Summit 2025)

186: Rare Earths, Energy, and the Green Agenda (Money Maze Allocator Summit 2025)

On 30th September and 1st October 2025 we held our inaugural Money Maze Allocator Summit (MMAS). We gathered 120+ global investors & allocators - many of whom have been previous guests - for 2 days of...

30 Okt 202552min

185: RIT Capital Partners: Global, Unconstrained, Undervalued? A Conversation with Maggie Fanari (RIT CEO)

185: RIT Capital Partners: Global, Unconstrained, Undervalued? A Conversation with Maggie Fanari (RIT CEO)

Founded in 1971 as the Rothschild Investment Trust, RIT Capital Partners PLC, continues today with a mandate to preserve and grow capital across generations through a multi-asset, global and unconstra...

16 Okt 202541min

184: From Westminster to Silicon Valley: A Connected World at Risk - Sir Nick Clegg on threat to Global Connection in the Age of AI & Political Conflict.

184: From Westminster to Silicon Valley: A Connected World at Risk - Sir Nick Clegg on threat to Global Connection in the Age of AI & Political Conflict.

It’s not every guest who would admit in their new book, with brutal honesty, “I’ve been vilified, satirised, protested against- a hate figure both on left and right.”  But it is also uncommon, if not...

18 Sep 20251h 18min

183: How Good of a Communicator Are You? Messaging, Reputation, Trust & Strategy in the Age of AI - With Jen Prosek, CEO and Founder of Prosek

183: How Good of a Communicator Are You? Messaging, Reputation, Trust & Strategy in the Age of AI - With Jen Prosek, CEO and Founder of Prosek

Today’s episode started as “Good Investor, Poor Communicator”, but as we researched this topic ahead of the conversation it became a bigger theme than simply, why at times, great investment managers a...

9 Sep 202552min

182: Private Credit: Hype, Hazard, or the Next Big Thing in Long-Term Growth? With Huw Van Steenis, Vice Chair of Oliver Wyman.

182: Private Credit: Hype, Hazard, or the Next Big Thing in Long-Term Growth? With Huw Van Steenis, Vice Chair of Oliver Wyman.

When someone speaks with a deep of understanding of the banking and finance systems, is widely respected, and then expresses a strong but debatable view, about a developing asset class, we think it’s ...

28 Aug 202551min

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