6 Free Financial Modeling Lessons...and More.

I haven’t watched a non-007 movie in almost a year, and over the weekend I finally broke that streak by watching “Dirty Harry” and “Magnum Force.”

Needless to say, the movies had an effect other than making me wish that I was a cop working in 1970s San Francisco. Dirty Harry extols the virtue of playing by your own rules, even if it means clashing with your superiors (granted, Detective Callahan’s boss was a crook too, so that makes it a bit easier). As Dirty Harry says many times, “a man’s got to know his limitations.”

But limitations are exactly what most of our educational backgrounds seem to be forcing on us, as James Altucher writes in this old blog post of his: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2013/03/unschool-your...

It's been a rough couple of weeks for Stevie Cohen and his crew, and the situation is growing more "fluid" with each passing day. I kinda kept one eye on it all weekend after the somewhat cryptic announcement on Friday that SAC would no longer be "fully" cooperating with the government's investigation into insider trading at the fund.

Then came the announcement that Cohen himself had been subpoenaed, and the previous announcement was interpreted to mean that he planned to take the Fifth rather than testify before a grand jury.

Now the rumor is that Cohen may be cutting a deal with the feds that would close the fund to outside investors altogether. This deal would include an admission of guilt on the part of SAC in exchange for deferred prosecution (meaning no criminal liability unless the firm were to break the law again).

Stock Market Analysis

Conclusions: The Dow and the S&P 500 hit new record highs last week. The Dow surged 1.6% while the S&P jumped 2%. The excitement extended to small cap stocks as well. In spite of the big jump in the indexes, only 19 stocks advanced for every 13 stocks that fell, however, 914 stocks hit new highs and only 74 hit new lows. In the words of Phil Robertson, everybody (but the bears) was “Happy, happy, happy.”

I work as a long/short equity analyst at a large hedge fund. I've been lucky enough to be more than just a model monkey early on in my career, but have also been exposed to the stress of being measured on returns. I primarily cover consumer and TMT names. I went the typical path (target school --> IB --> HF), but have insight for those that have to follow more non-traditional paths.

ps I did one of these last year that you can see here: "Finishing 1st Year as HF Analyst - Ask Anything"

I'm not sure what compelled me to see Assault on Wall Street over the weekend. I guess I just figured "How bad could it be?". Well, consider that question answered: it's truly execrable, but not without a few unintentional redeeming qualities.

We all know the basic premise of the movie: big evil banks drive some poor bastard into the poorhouse and he shows up on the trading floor with an Uzi and exacts sweet revenge on the behalf of little guys nationwide. For a ham-fisted propaganda piece, the movie is just what you'd expect. Where the movie fails to get it's anti-Wall Street message across, however, is in just how unlikeable the main characters are.

The movie centers on an armored car driver and his sick wife. Neither one of them is memorable in any way, and to prove this I can't even remember what her malady was. Leukemia, I think. Anyway, these two knuckleheads make a series of idiotic decisions which lead to financial catastrophe. The funny thing is that their problems weren't even caused by Wall Street.