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.
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