VBA for Excel, Useful or a waste of my time?
Hey boys,
I am a senior at a non-target and I just received an offer from a well-known middle market. Very excited about the offer. Now my focus is standing out amongst my analyst class. In school I took a CS class which taught me some basic VBA for excel. I am wondering if you guys think it would be an utter waste of time if I went ahead and continued to learn VBA for banking? I am shooting to become an "excel jockey" (to quote an MD at a top firm) but don't want to waste my time focusing on less important material.
Comments Appreciated
Won't be needed unless you are in a product group that deals with securitizations, a lot of amortization schedules, or monte carlo analysis
I disagree- I find it very useful to know a little VBA, even if it's not required.
true...it would be useful with cleaning up screens and formatting data etc but isnt 100% needed. if you try using it in a model for the higher ups they will likely bitch you out since they wont understand whats going on
Ok, Thanks guys
Just so you know, the kid who knows VBA is known as the kid who knows VBA. Might sound dumb, but people will soon figure out your the VBA or Excel Wiz. It is a unique skill in IB (among analyst classes), especially when you get the non CS kids who don't know how to do it.
This can be good and bad. You may get a bunch of boring excel work that no one else can do, which may hinder your ability to work on other projects, but will also make a number of people dependent upon you. When people become dependable on you, they tend to want to keep you around.
Just my two cents
This.
It will depend on how mature is the desk, you might end up building everything from scratch or just use existing .xls
How much of an advantage is programming in Excel VBA (Originally Posted: 01/12/2016)
College student about to graduate studying Accounting, I will have been programming casually in Excel VBA for almost two years when I graduate. How much of an advantage will this be in the be in world of Finance and Accounting?
Probably not anything dramatic to be honest. Nice to have? Sure! But we all know there are better things to know and depends on what field within finance you are referring to.
What are some things that would be better to know?
"World of finance and accounting" is too broad. It's a pretty important part of my day-to-day work (L/S HF) but it'd be useless in a traditional IBD setting.
It's the sort of thing you can list as a skill on a resume, but I wouldn't expect you to get any jobs simply because you have the experience. Might make a good talking point with someone in an interview if they ask about it.
Being able to automate processes through VBA has been a huge advantage for me personally. In my current role VBA allows me tackle complex problems and eliminate mundane tasks leaving more time for actual analysis. Of course its usefulness varies by position and company but overall I think it is good to know and can definitely help you get a job in corporate finance.
I interviewed at a number of companies before accepting the position I'm in now and 90% of them were extremely interested in my VBA capabilities.
The models I build are too heavy to run sensitivies manually and so I need to run macros in excel. I learned how to program C++ in school but not VBA. As a result, I can follow the logic of the code, but I can't write it. I'm forced to do a lot of copy pasting from other models and forums - knowing VBA would definitely speed up my work!
How useful is VBA??? (Originally Posted: 06/07/2014)
I have heard VBA is quite important to learn but exactly how useful is it? Obviously different roles would require different levels of understanding on the matter but how much VBA is used in trading, research and at funds/IBs etc? Would one just need competence in using pre-built macros or would one need to develop code to be used?
Certainly useful at junior levels. If you come in and start automating shit with VBA's, a lot of groups will think you're a rock star. Just make sure you don't get pigeonholed into being the tech guy of the group, as these skills ultimately won't help you at more senior levels.
If you're job includes significant time using Excel, VBA will be very useful. Even if you've never coded, it's one of the more accessible languages. Check out Lynda or Udemy for their course offerings.
It can't hurt. You can do some cool shit with code.
Interesting, seems VBA will be useful. Is it worth learning VBA or something more specific like financial modelling with VBA?
For any programming language I have learned, I found it best to learn it by doing something you are interested in. Otherwise, you will get bored very quickly. So if it were me, I would jump into financial modelling. Google the basics that you don't know when you come across them.
Learn VBA first then learn how to apply it. Walk before you run.
Its not necessary, but it will help
Interesting topic. The firms I interned with never used them.
But I heard if you mention VBA in your resume, you are risking yourself to be put into backoffice.. but if that's where you want to be, it should be fine
VBA is very useful. Many datasets used in financial applications are exported into Excel, as well as many other datasets. It's funny because you learn more stuff like C#/Java/Python in school for computer science, but once I started working I found that VBA can be used extensively. Being able to write macros to automate things or do things with data that your group may need is invaluable. Though it's debatable, I firmly believe VBA has probably the most applicability in work than any other language. You may work with APIs in C# or some other object-oriented language, but Excel is used by so many people for so many things....it is just the most basically practical and used UNLESS you are going into a true application development role. Besides, VBA is great to learn because it's easier and more narrow than many other languages.
VBA for Excel (Originally Posted: 01/30/2007)
Is VBA for Excel quite a common skill for analysts in IBD? If you don't know it well, is there much point having a basic understanding? Or if you're going to benefit at all from it (besides the "record macro" tool), you'll have to know it pretty well?
Any comments?
On another fun note....which is more important. Excel or Powerpoint? Could get some interesting responses, eh?
I think vba is annoying an ugly, all of my mds hate it
Can you expand on your MDs hating it? I've used VBA for a while and it's a great tool for increasing efficiency. I'm just trying to understand what they hate? Is it the code, the time it takes to code, or just the use of it in general? Thanks
The comment on MDs (+ many others who aren't proficient in VBA) hating it is probably because unless your VBA skills are good enough to understand the macro, it's "unauditable". Harder to modify, troubleshoot, hence pass on to others, whatever.
You can get/build some really good models without VBA so I'd say avoid it. I took an intensive VBA course and haven't used the shit. Recording can be useful for things as dumb as a shortcut to an input/summary page if you have a ridiculous number of pages in your file (can be easier than Ctrl+pagedown times 15).
If you have time for a VBA course and want to improve on Excel, you'd better spend that time practicing the formulas and keyboard shortcuts.
As for xls vs ppt... I say xls, that's the tool you use to justify the $$$. Formatting is outsourced or for interns.
Last time I was here, I did write something in response to this. Now it's gone.....
Anyway, along the lines of being happy that VBA isn't a skill that's needed. I have a basic understand of what it can do, but I certainly can't do anything with it.
Excel and powerpoint (I will be an intern), and keyboard short-cuts will be good to learn better then.
I use a Mac at home, so does anybody have a short list of the most useful PC keyboard short-cuts? (maybe this should be a new thread, eh?)
A new thread's a good idea, but I'll let you take care of that if you want to ask for a list of people's favourite tricks.
Google for shortcuts as well as tutorials on financial modelling, you'll find loads. I think you can even get a list of shortcuts from the microsoft website, but practicing on a Mac may not be that easy (I know nothing about Macs). Apart from that, on MS Office hold down "Alt" and a whole new world opens up to you (saddest sentence I've ever written) - you can then select different streams of letters for different actions.
When I was an intern is was a great help, I managed to reduce a couple of days admin work into a few clicks - no one else on my desk knew VBA (mind u it was origination..... start mocking!) beyond recording macros and were amazed - it became a big factor in me getting a f/t offer elsewhere in the firm.
Certainly anything like VBA is useful if you're very good at it and can use it solve a variety of problems, and you can reduce everyone's workload with various codes. However, without a good knowledge, nobody would be too impressed with being able to generic little bits of code that just make things difficult to update/audit. That seems to be what I've gathered from this thread. So, unless I can find time to really master it, I probably won't even try (there are better things to be studying).
well it was essential (almost) for my course so I had all the skills from applying it so I can see what u mean.
depending on the analysis you do, it can really come in handy. i use it for running different scenarios without having to use data tables, which slow things down quite a bit
Is it still generally pointless to spend time learning VBA for IB? Yes, I know, MEGA BUMP
Put it this way: I know basic vba codings but have never used it.
However, I have heard of it being applied by my ex-colleagues for research purposes. financial modelling for M&A/valuations isn't really all that complicated frankly. I don't see vba being a necessity but it's definitely a useful tool to have.
I've used VBA to help run multiple scenarios through a model and to fill out data tables. The issue is that it can't be easily audited by your seniors if they're not proficient. Thus I'd avoid using to make calculations. It's good for driving a model for multiple inputs as a time saving measure, though.
I'd suggest having a basic grasp of VBA, so you have an understanding of what it can and can't do, but I don't think it's worth spending a great deal of time learning it.
VBA use? (Originally Posted: 06/25/2014)
For all of you Excel users out there, how often do you write your own macros? That is, how often do you use VBA in your field?
I feel that I am relatively knowledgeable about Excel, but VBA just baffles me. Is it a skill I should pursue, or is it inconsequential?
Is it required as a part of my job? No. Does it make me many times more efficient and allow me to do certain analyses that would have otherwise been impossible? The answers is most unequivocally yes. I'm reasonably efficient at VBA now after teaching myself over the last few months and I'm already starting to realize the limitations of excel and starting to learn Matlab. I use VBA at least once a day now just to make my life easier.
(a few months ago I had zero CS background and was probably just as baffled as you are)
Have any examples of where you use it? (ie. just in your analysis, or are you creating Macros that pull in data from external sources...etc)
I use VBA to write custom keyboard shortcuts that are mostly related to formatting. Stuff like color / style toggles or borders.
Wouldn't it just be simpler to create a macro? Without having to use a VBA code?
Anyone have VBA tutorials or literature they found particularly useful when starting out?
I thought VBA for Dummies was useful.
The way I learned at the very beginning was just to record macros and then go in and edit them
Did you use any other resources to help pick up VBA or Matlab?
I've heard from friends at Goldman it is a huge time saver if you are knowledgeable enough
vba is completely useless in banking. just learn how to copy paste and you'll be good
I use it quite regularly to correctly format large data dumps. Immensely helpful for dealing with large sets of numbers without needing to use CTRL-C CTRL-V ad infinitum.
Here's a link I found that's really helping me get a better grasp of VBA. They also have tutorials for other languages and even have some excel if anyone is wanting to brush up on that. It's all really straightforward material that's easy to digest.
http://www.homeandlearn.org/index.html
VBA/Excel (Originally Posted: 03/24/2014)
What position are you in and how often do you use VBA? I've seen some applications that say familiarity is a big plus. I currently use it to create my own models and automate work.
when its needed.
Necessity of VBA Knowledge (Originally Posted: 04/29/2013)
I hope to go for Sales and Trading intern type positions when I travel to NYC this summer on a 12 month Visa. I did a quantitative degree however we were never introduced to VBA nor were our excel skills really improved. Spent plenty of time using software packages I don't think are really used in the "real world"...
Advice on where best to learn, what to focus on and what to ignore in order to save time? I have finals coming up and so I only have a short period to mess around with after exams.
In all seriousness I've found trial and error combined with google searches to be the most effective VBA teacher.
This. Think of a task that people around on your floor spend a lot of time on in excel - creating charts, formatting things, creating datatapes, consolidating numbers, creating and using financial analysis templates. Then try to optimize the task using VBA. In general VBA is useful is with big data with a well framed data structure. IBD has cell-cell level adjustments so running macros on that is pointless.
This.
It wont help you sleep at night to have to learn on the job, but its the most efficient way.
Record macro, see how it works, re-write parts of it so that it is not cell/sheet/workbook specific. And google.
How good should your VBA be ? (Originally Posted: 08/09/2010)
I have been working in markets for around 6 months now and was thinking of moving into Corp finance / M&A. Is that possible ? I am aiming to get in at analyst level ( I am still an analyst myself ).
Is this move possible ? How good does your "VBA/Macro" skills have to be ?? It is not like I do not do comps/ modelling at my desk, but from what I read about hear it will be considerably more sophisticated if I want to move over there.
Anybody ?
If you're working in markets as in sales/trading, your VBA skills are beyond those of most IBD analysts.
Look- programming/algorithms skills have never hurt anyone, but in banking, they are a little less important than in S&T or research. How complicated can the models really get? It's not like you're going to have to do some complicated caching or producer-consumer software design models to handle everything. I say focus on people skills and sales abilities if you're going into M&A or Commercial Banking.
Thx programmer, I was thinking the along the same lines. I am in DCM so not a trader. I do genuinely believe that if you manage to pass the " grunt work " phase it all comes down to you people and sales skills.
I was just wondering whether such a move is possible, I do not have stellar academics as per say , but I got relevant experience !!
I know this is a bit off topic but you said your an analyst for markets. I'm assuming you mean global markets. I am at the second stage of recruitment for an analyst job with GM and was wondering if they're paid the same as M&A.
I think at analyst level all pay the same (by analyst i mean either graduate program or internship ). Going forward you will find loads of threads in here with much more info about this. For me I had to get my foot in the door some how and somewhere so my contract and the money i get is really bad !! , I accepted though due to of other factors
Good luck with your interview though
need to know macros ?? (Originally Posted: 08/31/2007)
I"m good at excel, but know very little (or none) of macro. Do IB analysts really need to know it ?
what about analysts in other divisions : finance, operations,... ?? Do they need to know it too ?
need macros, but there are times with big models that they can be helpful (90% of analysts never/rarely learn or use them). In certain other divisions such as structured products, more complex groups within S&T that don't need actual programming, people will use macros frequently in excel
I have never seen an analyst use a macro. I know how to create but I have never shared that information because that is work that analysts do not do.
To echo Napoleon--in IBD it's not necessary (although it can make your life easier if you decide to learn). In S&T it is desk-dependant, but you will definitely use them on a daily basis--you may not create them yourself, but you will use them, so it helps to be familiar with the basics. Either way, there is always someone out there much smarter than you on any given subject, so you can always utilize them. Everything you need to know you'll learn on the job once you come under fire for the first time, so don't lose too much sleep over it now.....
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