ABSTRACT
The Financial Accounting Standards Board, the now-dominant standards-setter for the accounting profession, has put out first an exposure draft, and a final statement. This chapter suggests that some data on corporate earnings and position would be consistent with the standard for measuring and reporting on performance for individuals and companies managing securities. It argues that in the investment field accountants are ahead of many managers in their thinking. The chapter considers the problem of measuring and reporting on the performance of investment entities, leaving to others, or perhaps to ourselves in another forum, discussion of the larger and more complicated issues involved in measuring and reporting on performance of business firms in such a way as to be useful to investors. Measurement normally involves quantifying the dimensions of something in terms of some unchanging unit of account, often in order to compare it with something else.
