Why is all modeling still done in Excel??
It’s ridiculous that Excel is the default for every type of calculation and that people are still manually spreading comps every quarter like??? Anyone who has even touched a coding language could design a more modular and powerful way to model. I understand that boomers might not trust models that they can’t understand the inner workings of but it’s not like anyone believes these things are 100% valid anyways. The inefficiency is staggering so someone please explain
Out of curiosity, why is Bank M&A considered easy to template?
Line items and operating model are all nearly exactly the same.
Thanks - this makes sense especially for visibility’s sake since it doesn’t make sense to expect clients to understand more opaque models. I still think that routine updating type work (comps, Bloomberg pulls, etc.) could benefit from much more automation than is currently in use today though.
You mean like a central database of comps and transaction multiples where everyone in banking can check and submit errors in exchange for a $50 reward. That automatically pulls in info each quarter from filings, etc., and you can trace back links to the underlying source.
And can be refreshed in seconds...
There's this new up, emerging, top of the line Fintech enabled data service that's going to completely blow your mind. It's called "FactSet".
How have you liked it so far. I think I’d like to move into the startup world?
I'm in ib, very proficient in SQL and okay with Python data analysis.
I guarantee you that SQL queries are much easier for data analysis compared to Excel.
Once you know how to write the functions correctly, making charts would also be extremely easy with Python.
The thing is, both require a certain amount of time to learn. In the case of Excel, you can learn how to make a bar chart in 1 minute. With Python, the learning curve is definitely steeper and the process longer.
Guess which employers are willing to teach? Oh yeah, banks are known for being patient.
Facts. Banking is way behind. You wanna build innovative models, Dodd frank, or at least because of its demands, you have to do it at a buy side quant shop
Okay, coding genius/guru. How's StackOverflow coming?
Excel is valuable because it’s simple, not in spite of it.
I think back to also how easy it is to format out puts and add graphics. If I need to us comps in a deck I'm not going to pull from one program to put back into Excel to add some new graphics.
For the same reason that analysts have a job. Every quarter you have to actually look at the financial statements and see if any adjustments are required. Aside from that updating a comps model every quarter should be pretty automated considering you should be able to pull data in from FactSet. Aside from analyzing the Q's themselves, it should literally just be updating a date on your comps model. If it isn't then your rolling comps model isn't optimized.
FactSet regularly has messed up comps data (often with the adjustments as you said). It's often faster/more accurate to just have everyone responsible for 8-10 comps which takes like 30 minutes each time one comes out, or have India resources do it, than be scrubbing every incorrect number from FS and getting them to fix it.
You should be pulling the financials in, not FactSet's comps multiples. The financials are almost always correct for larger companies.
The coding language that you are referring to exists. It is called "Analyst".
analyst life is paradise (serious)
Hahaha
Damn bro you sound like you are great at coding. Why don’t you make an alternative? I met a guy at Apollo who said someone should make an alternative to Excel. You’re about to be a billionaire!
I don’t spread the financials. Someone in India does it for me.
I've seen people in India making financial models...won't drop names but it's pretty abhorrent. I don't use the word "abhorrent" often...
“Spread financials” not build models. Gotta set the file up so even a monkey know how to do it.
They just need to make excel faster. There’s a lot of advanced functionality you can do in excel but the files just begin to get really slow.
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