Has anyone used this program/website to learn financial modeling? http://www.factset.com/products/investmentbanking/financetraining/kbase/ If so, were you impressed? If not, would you recommend another program? I’m paying for this myself rather than having it paid for by a firm. Thanks!
I did dealmaven for $300-$400, whatever it was. It was worth it. Has anyone ever looked at Factset’s earnings reports? They are on fire. I wonder how much longer they can keep growing like that.
How long did it take you to work through the program? I’d like to get through it as fast as possible without going so quickly that I gloss over the important stuff.
Am also going to do it, but only in August.
Hey Hooker, I see that DealMaven describes both levels of the course as being at intermediate level. How would you describe it?
Could someone tell me how these things actually work? Do you have lectures to stream, things to read like a book, or lots of software type exercises bolted onto Excel? It seems to me that there are lots of people who want to learn how to build financial models (there are quite a few posts on here about it) and the market is quite large.
Ok, since I have not actually done this course yet, I speak under correction. As I understand it the ‘tuition’ is web based, you work through the material at your own pace and do a quiz every once in a while. The finance and Excel aspects are integrated, which sounds really good to me. During the course you learn how to interpret the data and set up your own model and at the end you have to build a model from scratch and use it to analyse a problem they give you. You submit your entire model for the final grade. For 99 per level (there are only two), you have 3 months worth of access to the site and three attempts at getting the model spot on. You can also opt for a lifetime membership which is a couple of hundred .
I did the dealmaven course when I was first starting out in finance (no prior background). I thought the course was generally okay, but the interface is clunky and the accounting lessons were not adequate for me. Basically, it walks you through how to build transaction models, including general structure and some intermediate concepts like look up functions, etc. The modeling itself is easy stuff, but if you are not familiar with accounting, it can be hard to take a lot away from the lessons. I would recommend the program, but only if you couple it with an accounting text or prior accounting background. NOTE: The first module only teaches you about investment banking type modeling. If you are looking to build earnings models or discounted cash flow models – the kind of thing you would be doing as an equity research analyst – then the program is not for you. In this case, try the free downloads on the Damodoran website.