I can’t do mental math, will that be a problem? It’s almost like a disability for me. I just can’t seem to visualize numbers in my head well other than basic multiplication, addition and division. Small numbers.
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Eh, not really at the junior level. Most of the time you will just be in Excel. Sometimes the seniors I work with so backhand math for deal value or financing structure but it’s not like the analyst is really expected to do that.
I will say though, it’s important to understand math in the sense of being able to quickly analyze when a number is wrong. Also you need to understand algebra/how formulas work so you can back into numbers/analyses, even when the actual computation is done by a computer/Excel.
The only time I really had to use mental math was for a paper LBO during OCR, which you would definitely be fucked on if you can’t do mental math quickly/accurately. It’s actually pretty difficult, think about building a LBO on paper without a calculator and having to build out the growth rates and margins and then flow through all your calculations to get a valuation.
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