Financial Analysis topic

[kimbui]

Hi all,

I'm student in Financial Analysis,I'd like to ask you some questions about studying methods, what should we focus on? what are the most difficulties and how can we take over?

Some F.Analysists could tell us about job perspectives after graduation (I'm in Msc now) ?

Thank you in advance!

[giangle]

I don't quite understand your questions. Could you rephrase them or write them in Vietnamese (Others and I understand Vietnamese better than English, I guess :-)).

In general, as speaking/presenting/negotiating is not our (Vietnamese) strength, I think, you should focus on quantitative and programming subjects. Try to get involve in research projects in your department. It's not too early to start reading/watching financial news/reports to get use to financial jargons (google the unfamiliars or post questions here). At least you should be able to tell what is the latest high of the SP500 ;-)

[kimbui]

First of all, thank you for your advices and I'm sorry for my bad English!

As I know, Finance world isn't only quant, there are also financial analysis, wealth management, and so on. Quant is the most difficult part. If you are good at quant, you may be a good F.analyst or a private banking manager. But sometimes we are unable to do many jobs in the same time.

My previous questions mean that if someones have studied finance, especially financial analysis could give us some experiences in studying. If we specialize in F.A and we know programming and quantitative subjects, it's very good but financial engineering isn't the main point of F.A. F.A is rather risks and returns valuation.

S&P 500 is an US famous index but the movements of the stocks price in this market come from where? The FED's cut of 25 basis point last October makes any sense ?

I'm sorry for asking F.A questions in Quantitative Finance forum but as student, we need to learn the other parts of Finance and I hope some members in this forum are F.analysts or are interested in F.A in particular and in Finance in general.

[meanntn]

Financial analysis mostly deals with "fundamental analysis" which is the most important and most difficult part of FA.

Fundamental analysis is very important because it will be used to evaluate and predict company performance (profitability & risk). Most decision on long term investment will be based on this process. So make sure you familiar with its technique.

One difficulty of Fun Ana is that you will have to, first, remember the way to reformulate the balance sheet and income statement; then you have remember a lot of fomulas, which are the break down of profit (risk) indicators into several detail levels. Therefore if you have to do exam on this, it is quite troublesome if you are not allowed to bring ur book in. Most students have very low marks on this exam!

Solution: Do a lot of exercise! without opening your book!

Hope that helps!

[neomikeo]

I am not sure if FA still has much validity (except in M&A valuations) these days. Given extreme volatility of the markets, FA possbily could not provide much inference for trading strategy. A fund now could replace the job of thousand analysts with quantitative resources and trade in multiple markets and instruments at the same time.

[kimbui]

Thanks meanntn, you've studied F.A. It's very nice of you. This semester I'll learn FA Valuation 1 and the main part of FA, as you said is fundamental analysis and I'll pass Valuation 2 next semester. I must keep your advices in my mind !!!

Btw, I've some courses as Fixed Income, Portfolio Management, Corporate Finance and Internative Investment and Risk Management. They are my core courses for FA, too. Would you give me some guides in studying them ? Matlab or VBA in Excel is more useful in programming some formulas of these courses?

@neomikeo: I'm not sure about anything, too. The world
changes and we must adapt to any situation we are in !

[giangle]

Matlab is definetly more powerful than VBA/Excel, but depending on your courses,VBA/Excel may be a more appropriate tool. There are funds which still rely entirely on VBA/Excel for their data handling and analysis (I learned this from a Matlab saleman ;-)), so don't worry if you don't know Matlab.

But I still insist you to get good marks on your transcript for quantitative and programming subjects. Many recruiters would take that as an evidence of high IQ, not from corporate finance or risk management.