Thanks for the feedback Martel. I wouldn't necessarily agree with you regarding reading annual reports. Annual reports are public information, so by all means someone can read a single annual report daily if they wish to.

You can actually self-teach yourself a lot about annual report reading by firstly reading them often and secondly reading material on reading annual reports.

I've never been an institutional investor so I can't say how I would stack up against one but I'm not afraid of reading an annual report. Once you put in the practice then pointing out accounting sleight of hand isn't tremendously difficult.

I would say accounting standards have come a long way that even though not perfect, many companies are somewhat transparent. I don't think the big auditors would sign off on a report with fake numbers in them.

Furthermore, reading annual reports is mostly about interpreting information. You don’t really need large organisational training to tell you when a company is a dud.

For example, why did Evegrande collapse? A news article would tell you that the company had too much debt and couldn't pay it back. But, having some skills in reading annual reports would tell you that the company had twice the debt to equity, a tiny operating income compared to its borrowings, and a real estate company diversified also in healthcare, technology and theme parks doesn't really make sense.

In general, these factors don't point to a great company. Maybe, I'm just playing hindsight bias here, since I read the annual report after the company collapse, but those factors are usual signs of a poorly managed company anyway.

But, I would agree with your sentiment that getting it right is a lot harder.

This quote by John Maynard Keyenes utters my approach to reading annual reports: "It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong."

I do like your comments about affiliate marketing. I'm horrendous at it and can't say much for it. That is a good point that people don't have much of a competitive advantage once they've run out of family and friends to sell to.