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A lot of young aspiring finance professionals struggle to find good learning resources. Hope this helps. I have linked everything down below if you’d rather not read (skip to the end).
You may want a role as an equity research analyst or a similar role. Problem is, there is a lot of noise online with subpar courses which are probably a complete waste of your money. Let’s begin:
Accounting- You don’t need to be an accounting whiz, but you will need a good understanding of how this all works since accounting is the foundation of everything in finance. An excellent resource that you can learn from is edspira. I have linked the financial accounting course that is completely free and although lengthy it will help you understand accounting very well if you are new.
Foundations of Finance, Corporate Finance and Valuation- I clubbed all of these together because the best place to learn all of these is on youtube at Prof. Aswath Damodaran’s channel. Professor Damodaran is world renowned (I guess) and I have found his material to be the best in valuation and corporate finance. I recommend checking out his Accounting 101 playlist for a quick run-through and seeing some accounting problems, then the foundations of finance series (if you want to master more finance theory, which you should, I have linked resources below). Feel free to rewatch those lectures again and again until you get a good understanding. Then watch his classes on Corporate Finance and Valuation. It is amazing all this stuff is for free.
As you watch his classes do try his post class tests and check out his website which has tons of data. It also has valuation excel spreadsheets for you to practice your skills on. I recommend practicing as you watch the lectures, or after you are done.
But watching these lectures won’t be enough at all. You need to apply what you learn. Value 10–12 companies using Professor Damodaran’s spreadsheets and get a good feel of how to research companies reading their quarterly and annual reports, analyst concalls, analyst reports, news items etc. It will take time to practice but will be worth it.
Excel, Tableau, PowerBI, Alteryx, Python etc.: Originally not a part of this article, but decided to add it later because this is a fundamentally important section. You need to learn basics of excel and then you will spend your lifetime mastering it and applying it. You can learn excel from youtube. ExcelIsFun is a great channel to start learning basics. You will also want to master things like Pivot Tables and Power Query. This udemy course is a great course to learn Power Query. There are great youtube tutorials too but you will have to search them up yourself. Similarly, learn basics of Tableau, Alteryx and PowerBI. You don't need to master them. Just learn them concurrently with other things.
About VBA: So a question that excel learners often ask is: Should I learn VBA in excel? The answer is... complicated. It is definitely a bonus if you know it, but you don't necessarily need it. You'll be fine without it. Even I don't know much in VBA and have never needed to. Just learn excel and its other features and you'll be fine. If you have extra time, sure learn it and it will help.
But honestly, I'd rather learn Python because that is something everyone should know anyway. One of my biggest regrets was not learning more Python earlier when I had the time. You definitely should learn Python from youtube. Don't just jump into Python for finance courses. Learn basic Python programming like engineers do. Learn data structures and algorithms. Ask someone from a technical background to guide you. I am not going to be able to direct you to good resources since I am not myself very good at it, but you'll be fine with youtube. Python is a very powerful tool for financial analysis and automation. You'll be glad you learnt it.
Mastering Modelling: By now, you should have a good grip of financial concepts that you need to apply for equity research roles. Now the time has come to actually master financial modelling like they do in actual investment banks. Unfortunately Professor Damodaran’s spreadsheets won’t be able to help in that regard. This is where you will need to pay some money, but trust me when I say it is worth it. The best author I have found for mastering financial modelling, m&a modelling, private equity modelling and IB interview questions in general is Paul Pignataro. He has 4 books and you may not read all of them in one go before applying, but definitely the one book on financial modelling. You can and should read the rest later. I know the books may seem expensive, but they are 100% worth it. You can check out his work on his youtube channel too where he posts free content that is also high quality.
Another great resource is Breaking Into Wall Street. I've never personally used their courses, but I've been reliably informed by people far smarter than me that BIWS is an excellent resource to learn modelling from (albeit a bit expensive). I've seen a few of their youtube videos and they are good. So I suggest checking them out too.
Should I pursue the CFA/FRM/CAIA etc.?
To build foundational knowledge and get a career boost: YES. You don't need them to get good jobs or knowledge, but they help for learning the basics and sure are in demand by prospective employers today. So, if you can, sure. If you can't due to financial and time constraints, you can still get equal amount of knowledge but will have to work a bit harder to get your foot in. Sadly, it is what it is. Doing these programs also will not make you an advanced investor, that side comes from own experience and deep dives. You would still need to go through a lot of material that is in this post and more. Here's a bit more of my thoughts on the CFA/FRM/other programs, but this paragraph summarizes the whole post well.
Beyond: Learning never stops. I am also still learning and will continue updating this article whenever I feel I can add more here. I wish success to anyone who comes across this. There’s more extra resources that you should check out for completeness:
Finance Basics
Mckinsey Valuation (A little different from Prof. Damodaran’s material but good read)
Economics
Blockchain resources (if you are into this stuff, I explored a lot & concluded it was overhyped)
Others
Aside from this, do check out free courses by colleges like MIT for other great resources and keep looking for more. Reddit has excellent finance subreddits which have wiki pages which you can use as learning guides. I am not very familiar with quantitative finance but that is something that is really worth looking into. I will update the page with resources to that in the future if I myself get deep into it.
Main Resources linked above:
ExcelIsFun and Power Query (also look into Tableau, Alteryx, PowerBI and definitely Python)
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