You recently received a letter from your Uncle Frank. A portion of the letter is presented below. You know that I have a significant amount of money I saved over the years. I am thinking about...

You recently received a letter from your Uncle Frank. A portion of the letter is presented below.



You know that I have a significant amount of money I saved over the years. I am thinking about starting an investment program. I want to do the investing myself, based on my own research and analysis of financial statements. I know that you are studying accounting, so I have a couple of questions for you. I have heard that different users of financial statements are interested in different characteristics of companies. Is this true, and, if so, why? Also, some of my friends, who are already investing, have told me that comparisons involving a company’s financial data can be made on a number of different bases. Can you explain these bases to me?