Hi everyone,
I am going to start an internship in S&T this summer. How much excel knowledge do I need? I have very little knowledge in excel (know nothing about vba/some other functions). What would be the best resource (books/websites) to learn from scratch? Which version do you use in the office and does it matter a lot?
Many thanks!
we use (US BB) use 2010. A website called linda is v helpful, woould be worth signing up to that for a month of two. Mostly will use if, sumif, pivots tables, arrays and some graphs/charting. VBA is really useful and will make you an asset but will only be used heavily on more quant like trading desks (derivs rates/fx, D1, algo trading, vol trading etc)
we use (US BB) use 2010. A website called linda is v helpful, woould be worth signing up to that for a month of two. Mostly will use if, sumif, pivots tables, arrays and some graphs/charting. VBA is really useful and will make you an asset but will only be used heavily on more quant like trading desks (derivs rates/fx, D1, algo trading, vol trading etc)
Tbh excel is best learnt from necessity. If you really have some time then get Walkenbacks VBA power programming boook and work through some examples. You dont need to memorize anything, just be aware that there is a way to do XYZ, then if you need it you can reference it. 90% of being good at Excel is knowing there is a way to do something, then you can just google to fill in the details.
Completely agree. It's less about knowing how to do specific things and more about knowing how to find out how to do specific things. I knew I was trading mortgages before starting the internship and rather than buying a book on Excel I simply started building amortization tables, tranching out CMOs, coding custom functions to help me calculate things like LIBOR z-spread, etc. I think it's much better to learn by having mock projects that you want to complete and then having to use google to figure out how to get it to do exactly what you want. They don't even need to be finance related projects although that was the most interesting and useful to me.
For instance if you're trading a vol product and have at least a little bit of stats knowledge it would be a good learning exercise (and not that difficult) to build custom Excel functions that return the Black-Scholes call and put price, after that you can work up to stuff like Monte Carlo simulation, real time data importation, etc.
Agree with this. Someone at my first job had a copy of the Walkenback book, and I took the limited knowledge of VBA, to combine it with my advanced knowledge of Excel to make simple applications that set me apart from others. Before diving into the VBA side you should enhance your knowledge of advanced functions of Excel, since what you may use in simple applications is directly attributable to that knowledge.
This is an update to the book I went through in its entirety in a college class I had, one of the most useful classes ever: http://www.Amazon.com/Learn-Excel-Expert-Skills-Method/dp/0955459982
as long as you didn't promise you are a proficient user, you are good. Anyone with a head on their shoulders can grasp some of the more complex functions by youtubeing/google. Just get to know the basic MSFT Excel functions and always know there is a solution to a problem. I don't have any books but again google is the best/cheapest resource. Your job is to not be a pro at excel, its to get the task at hand completed. You will learn enough along the way. Good luck
Any basic/intermediate finance VBA books that any of you would recommend?
Learnt B-S, GBM, etc. all in a Matlab class over a year ago, but almost 0 knowledge in VBA. Is basic Matlab knowledge easily translatable to VBA?
Best place to brush up on Excel (for S&T) (Originally Posted: 09/19/2012)
Hi guys,
I have an upcoming internship in S&T for a BB. I can use Excel at a basic/ intermediate level, but really want to sharpen up my Excel skills before the internship starts and was thinking of learning VBA too.
Can anyone recommend some good resources to get good at Excel and really up to speed, specifically stuff which is commonly carried out in Excel by the S&T side of things.
Thanks, any helpful advice much appreciated.
My best advice would be to use Breaking Into Wall Street or something similar to learn the basics but then to actually master it, nothing beats trial and error.
Set yourself a little project which you cannot currently do with ease and then try and do it. Google has a TON of information and can answer basically any formula / VBA question you can imagine. Just by trying to make something you don't know how to do you will learn an immense amount. This goes for both standard Excel and VBA.
Trial and error and doing something yourself are the best forms of learning in my opinion.
Thanks for the reply.
What kind of project would you recommend to try?
I have no idea what desk I will be on, or even if it will be sales or trading! I want to be able to feel competent in Excel and have a better grasp of it than my fellow interns. :)
VBA is not difficult (just my opinion). It's better idea to start practicing matlab
Not all banks use Matlab though???
For a small VBA project, try building a Sudoku puzzle solver. Or building a game of blackjack/5-card draw. Try not to steal any code off the net, just use the net as a resource for learning - not copying.
The Sudoku puzzle will take a lot more thought and logic (because you need to tell Excel how to solve it)... v.s. a poker game is more about building a random number generator that won't repeat a number.
Wall Street Prep helped me out a lot, but not as much as BB training. Here's a link:
http://www.wallstreetprep.com/blog/excel_resources.php
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