Want to know more about IB.... Is getting a text book worth it?
I am a freshman at a target school who wants to learn more about investment banking. I am not in the business school at my university, although I am trying to transfer into it at the moment.
I have a very basic understanding of what Investment Banking is. To put it in perspective, I could tell you the difference between each sector of Investment Banking (M/A, Capital Markets, S&T, and Asset Management) but not much more. WSO recommends the book written by Josh Rosenbaum and Josh Pearl -* Investment Banking: Valuation, Leveraged Buyouts, and Mergers and Acquisitions.* Would you guys say getting this book is worth it or should I spend my time focusing on other things? If you guys think its worth it, would it be a struggle for me to get through the book? Meaning, would I have to look up every other word on the internet because I have such little prior knowledge?
If it helps answer my question, the main motivation to get this book is to become more prepared when applying for internships and on-campus finance clubs. When I applied for the clubs at the beginning of the semester, I quickly realized that I was completely unprepared, and I don't want that to happen again.
Yes, the book is worth it.
Josh's book is more like a practical guide rather than text books. It give you on-the-job instructions, how to pull data from Bloomberg terminals, how to calculate certain metrics and whatnot.
If you haven't started with any finance class yet. I suggested doing crash courses with Financial Accounting, Corporate Finance, Valuation. A lot of available resource online. With accounting, way too many free courses on the internet. Regarding Corporate Finance, Valuation, I suggested you look into Damodaran courses on Youtube. In the mean time, surfing the internet, reading FAQs on WSO and articles on M&I to understand more about the industry.
If you already have basic understanding of finance. Then you can move on to BIWS/WSP courses.
It gives you a practical guide, describes what the banker does step by step, describes the entire sell-side and buy-side process, and it has pretty much the majority of the technical knowledge you will need to succeed in IBD interviews (slightly lacking on the accounting side).
I would disagree slightly with your comment on doing courses. Most of them are far too theoretical (certainly those at university) with 10% being relevant in investment banking. Damodaran is more relevant if you want to do equity research or something along those lines where valuation is at the essence. I agree very much that his blog is insightful, but it is not reflective of a career in investment banking.
My personal opinion: the book is very much worth its cheap cost if you are at all interested in a career in finance.
Are there any pre-requisites that you recommend I do before getting the book? I don't want to jump in the book cold turkey.
If you're looking for more of a "fun" read that also happens to be a good intro to IB, check out Monkey Business by Peter Troob and his friend (can't remember name)
Personally, I would advise to extensively read the threads on this site. By doing so, you get a solid working understanding of how things work. Just have to sift through and sperate the solid content from the noise.
Dolor suscipit quia est eum quo et qui. Est dignissimos harum laudantium.
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