Recommendation financial modelling and valuation

CFA Level III
#1

Hello guys,

I have been reading you for a while but it is the first time I post here.

After passing the level 3 I would be interested in learning more about financial modeling and valuation. Please could you recommend me a good book on this topic?. Something not to basic, because I already have some hands on experience on the subject.

Thanks in advance

#2

Anybody??? Pleaseeeee?

#3

Search on Amazon for CFA Quants or other books. I’ve already started collecting books covering all areas on CFA exams.

#4

Agree, just search Amazon

#5

Ok, thanks for your value adding recommendations. I searched in Amazon before asking. Just wanted to have insight from other fellow candidates or charterholders more experienced than me.

#6

People in finance seem to like this book

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100827.Options_Futures_and_Other_Derivatives

To be honest, this book is not my type. But if all people read it, you should read it too to get some ideas about it.

#7

Thank you PierreCFA!! It is much appreciated.

#8

Hi

it depends on the instrument you are pricing and the context of the modeling. To me CFAI Investement series is a must have and it encompasses the three level of the CFA curriculum. For modeling, the best thing is an online course, not a book

#9

Check out Aswath Damodaran - great books and easy to follow through. He even has a website that holds data to keep the models updated.

https://www.amazon.com/Investment-Valuation-Tools-Techniques-Determining/dp/111801152X/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

#10

for modeling and valuation (these go hand in hand) check out Breaking Into Wall Street. After mastering their program, read Ben Graham’s books, Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis. Very practical and great books on value investing. As Buffett said these two books are a must read for anyone in the investment mgmt industry.

#11

Assuming modeling and valuation from an IBanking/PE perspective I agree with Infinity that Breaking Into Wall Street is the place to go, but it isn’t cheap. If you’ve got a buddy who would just send you a non-confidential model, you’d learn a lot about setting them up by just duplicating it from scratch for your own modeling. At that point it’s just build and repeat until you get the structure and coding of them down. Any employer would be okay with your style because once you understand how it all works, they can easy switch your style to their style if they want it to look different, but teaching you isn’t as quick.

If you have nobody in mind and don’t want to spend what these courses charge, I could make you one if you gathered me ~10 years of the most detailed nitty gritty quarterly financials for a particular small cap, mostly single-product, public company I’m researching for personal purposes. Simple if you have CapIQ, tedious if you don’t. Fair disclosure I’m corporate M&A with no background in banking and limited in PE.

#12

If you want to learn some applicable skills, I would recommend taking the Breaking Into Wall Street courses. They have general ones and a few industry-specific. I personally cover the Financials sector at work and their courses are really valuable.

#13

Thank you very much for the recommendations. I have already ordered one of the Damodaran’s books. I have been in a couple of his conferences and I have a huge respect for the professor.

Regards.

#14

Domodaran has couple of youtube videos too. I have not watched them yet but plan to do so soon.

#15

Damodaran on Valuation is a good start. You can also check out his page on NYU website.

#16

he has +400 videos

#17

To be honest most of the literature out there teaches you things that cfa has already taught you in some form or another.

If you want hands on and practical modelling and valuation experience, do a short course e.g. wall street but above all build your model models - find a firm you like and start playing with their financial statements and see if you can arrive at a valuation.

If you have already done all CFA exams, then Youtube should be sufficient actually - you dont need any books - just start building a basic model and expand from there.

#18

Damodaran is very good - but again you will gain only from his book if you are fairly new to valuations.

#19

I had the same idea, ordered these last week Practical Financial Modelling, Second Edition: A Guide to Current Practice - Jonathan Swan

simon benninga financial modeling

bookmarked this one

Corporate Financial Analysis with Microsoft Excel (McGraw-Hill Finance & Investing) - Francis Clauss

i had best best practices for equity research analysts by James J. Valentine for a while, just begun reading it…