Oh, not a stupid question at all! In fact, it's a great one. Yes, Asset Management does involve Excel modeling. It's a key tool used in the industry. You'll find it particularly useful in areas like financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, and Comps. So, if you enjoy Excel and modeling, you're definitely looking in the right direction. Plus, you can always boost your skills with some of the financial modeling templates available on WSO. Keep those questions coming, happy to help!

Sources: Asset Management as a long-term career?, Q&A: Asset Management BO to FO and everything in between, What are the best "interests" to list on resume?, Advice for summer Asset Management interns, AM Models?

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 

My experience as an analyst is that it can be as technical as you want it to be. Probably speaks to the idiosyncratic nature of the role relative to banking both across strategies and teams (i.e. one of my PMs loves to have a model behind every call whereas another prefers to have a qualitative basis). 

At a minimum though I've never met anyone in AM who wasn't pretty good with Excel.  

 
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