vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"Hmm, that doesn't quite answer my question -- sorry if I was unclear. Let me try rephrasing:  Here's what I'm asking: is the Black-Scholes equation derived using martingale pricing methods (e.g. Girsanov's theorem, the Martingale Representation Theorem, and so on) *equivalent* to the equation derived using the method in the 1973 paper, e.g. constructing a risk-less portfolio and eliminating the drift term? I was led to believe that both of these approaches *lead to the same result*.  I agree that there's an enormous difference between ""equilibrium"" and ""arbitrage free"" *term structure models*; I'm just not convinced that this is a meaningful difference in the case where market completeness holds, e.g. European equity options.   As you correctly said, it's generally impossible to parameterise a Vasicek model to get it to match the observed term structure, while this is something that can be readily done with a Hull-White / Ho-Lee / Libor Market Model. Hence, the prices you get from a Vasicek will obviously be different from what you get using a Hull-White (since you won't be able to match the initial term structure). But such a difference doesn't hold with a Black-Scholes equation derived using martingale vs. the original method.  Sorry if this sounds nitpicky; I just want to make sure I'm understanding these concepts correctly.  EDIT: Added italics."
I don't trust his analysis.  Further, any composite measure that includes a Black Swan year is *at least potentially* misleading. 2009 was a once in multigenerations event unlikely to be repeated anytime soon.  Since Shiller uses a 10 year historical running average it includes 2009 and is therefore, IMO, unreliable. Making 2009 look even more like an aberration is that the hole had been filled and then some in under 4 years.
"The professional financial advisors do have tools which will take a general description of a portfolio and run monte-carlo simulations based on the stock market's historical behavior. After about 100 simulation passes they can give a statistical statement about the probable returns, the risk involved in that strategy, and their confidence in these numbers.  Note that they do not just use the historical data or individual stocks. There's no way to guarantee that the same historical accidents would have occurred that made one company more successful than another, or that they will again. ""Past performance is no guarantee of future results""... but general trends and patterns can be roughly modelled. Which makes that a good fit for those of us buying index funds, less good for those who want to play at a greater level of detail in the hope of doing better. But that's sorta the point; to beat market rate of return with the same kind of statistical confidence takes a lot more work."
"Despite having a math degree, I basically only use basic algebra/probability/calculus on a day to day basis as my career has gone a different direction away from the modelling/quanty stuff.  Some fun reading:  * The SABR Model - [SABR/LIBOR Model](http://www.amazon.com/SABR-LIBOR-Market-Model-Interest-Rate/dp/0470740051) * Shevre's Stochastic Calculus for Finance - [Book 1](http://www.amazon.com/Stochastic-Calculus-Finance-Binomial-Textbooks/dp/0387249680/) &amp; [Book 2](http://www.amazon.com/Stochastic-Calculus-Finance-Continuous-Time-Textbooks/dp/144192311X/)  One of the big 'hard' problems is calibrating a swap curve w/ what's known as the 3s6s Basis. As a number of true quants have said to me it is a ""non-trivial problem"". Its basically trying to match two curves with different compounding over a number of different knot points.  SABR Model, listed above, is all about calibrating and figuring out how the current rate enviroment is behaving, is it normal or lognormal? What is the blend between the two, how do you know when you are in a different environment etc. Can rates go negative?"
Holy shit that can't be USA unless you're talking about commercial lending, even then sky high rates.  For the 97% LTV we sell at 3.58 last Saturday.  We're a large bank too, so none of that credit unions selling themselves short nonsense.  Mind you that's a special program through Fanny, but our normal rates are something like 4.4-4.55 depending on the day for 80/20  How can you be conservative but loan to credit score of over 500?  We don't even look at under 640 and we're considered somewhat conservative.
"Actually that statistic (whether it is 9/10 or 95% or 99%) is often VERY misquoted AND it is both overstated AND extremely misleading. * First of all the ratio/percentage of even the ""urban myth"" that ""everyone knows"" is purportedly **over a 5 year period of time** not a single year. * Secondly, just because a business has closed down or ceased to exist sometime prior to the 5 year mark, does NOT necessarily mean that it was a ""failure"" (and definitely not necessarily a ""bankruptcy""). * Third, it does not mean that all of the initial investment went ""poof"" -- **that may be true for high-tech startups** (especially the dot-com/dot-bomb con operations whose business ""plan"" resembles the [South Park Underpants Gnomes ""plan""](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dd/Gnomes_plan.png) more than anything else) -- but that is NOT necessarily true of the rest of the business world. Consider by contrast how many EMPLOYEES are still in the same JOB five years later (per data [the *average* job tenure in the US is now 4.6 years](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-less-likely-to-change-jobs-now-than-in-1980s-2014-01-10), which is actually UP from 3.7 years in 2002, and 3.5 years in circa 1983). The vast majority of small businesses (and the sheer volume\* skews the totals) are essentially that: they are job *replacement* (or even job *supplement*) businesses, which chiefly consist of the owner/operator being ""self-employed"" (or part-time self-employed ""on the side"") for a year, two years, and possibly longer. Occasionally they will then (often temporarily) employ others as well; but the primary goal is to provide a simple ""income"" for the owner/operator. **And there is nothing WRONG with that.** Nor is there anything wrong with the person then ENDING that ""business"" and moving on...
A good fundamental test book, besides Damodaran already mentioned in the comments, is: Valuation - Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies by Tim Koller, Marc Goedhart and David Wessels. It gives a very good breakdown of the DCF method for Valuation.
"The best place to start looking is the companies ""Balance Sheet"" (B/S).  This would show you the total shares ""outstanding."" The quarterly B/S's arent audited but a good starting point.  To use in any quant method, You also need to look a growth the outstanding shares number. Company can issue shares to any employee without making a filing.  Also, YOU will NEVER know exactly the total number because of stock options that are issued to employees that are out of the money arent account for. Some companies account for these, some dont.  You should also explore the concepts of ""fully dilute"" shares and ""basis"" shares. These concepts will throw-off your calc if the company has convertible bonds."
"The following is only an overview and does not contain all of the in-depth reasons why you should look more deeply. When you look at a stock's financials in depth you are looking for warning signs. These may warn of many things but one important thing to look for is ratio  and growth rate manipulation. Using several different accounting methods it is possible to make a final report reflect a PE ratio (or any other ratio) that is inconsistent with the realities of the company's position. Earnings manipulation (in the way that Enron in particular manipulated them) is more widespread than you might think as ""earnings smoothing"" is a common way of keeping earnings in line (or smooth) in a recession or a boom. The reason that PE ratio looks so good could well be because professional investors have avoided the stock as there appear to be ""interesting"" (but legal) accounting decisions that are of concern. Another issue that you don't consider is growth. earnings may look good in the current reporting period but may have been stagnant or falling when considered over multiple periods. The low price may indicate falling revenues, earnings and market share that you would not be aware of when taking only your criteria into account. Understanding a firm will also give you an insight into how future news might affect the company. If the company has a lot of debt and market interest rates rise or fall how will that effect their debt, if another company brings out a competing product next week how will it effect the company? How will it effect their bottom line? How much do they rely on a single product line? How likely is it that their flagship product will become obsolete? How would that effect the company? Looking deeply into a company's financial statements will allow you to see any issues in their accounting practices and give you a feel for how they are preforming over time, it will also let you look into their cost of capital and investment decisions. Looking deeply into their products, company structure and how news will effect them will give you an understanding of potential issues that could threaten your investment before they occur. When looking for value you shouldn't just look at part of the value of the company; you wouldn't just look at sales of a single T-shirt range at Wallmart when deciding whether to invest in them. It is exactly the same argument for why you should look at the whole of the company's state when choosing to invest rather than a few small metrics."
"I heard today while listening to an accounting podcast that a balance sheet... can be used to determine if a company has enough money to pay its employees.  The ""money"" that you're looking at is specifically cash on the balance sheet. The cash flows document mentioned is just a more-finance-related document that explains how we ended at cash on the balance sheet.   ...even looking for a job This is critical, that i don't believe many people look at when searching for a job. Using the ratios listed below can (and many others), one can determine if the business they are applying for will be around in the next five years.   Can someone provide me a pair of examples (one good)? My favorite example of a high cash company is Nintendo. Rolling at 570 Billion USD IN CASH ALONE is astonishing. Using the ratios we can see how well they are doing.  Can someone provide me a pair of examples (one bad)? Tesla is a good example of the later on being cash poor.   Walk me though how to understand such a document? *Note: This question is highly complex and will take months of reading to fully comprehend the components that make up the financial statements. I would recommend that this question be posted completely separate."
"Is evaluating stocks just a loss of time if the stock is traded very much? Not at all! Making sound investment decisions based on fundamental analysis of companies will help you to do decide whether a given company is right for you and your risk appetite. Investing is not a zero-sum game, and you can achieve a positive long-term (or short-term, depending on what you're after) outcome for yourself without compromising your ability to sleep at night if you take the time to become acquainted with the companies that you are investing in. How can you ensure that your evaluation is more precise than the   market ones which consists of the evaluation of thousands of people   and professionals? For the average individual, the answer is often simply ""you probably cannot"". But you don't have to set the bar that high - what you can do is ensure that your evaluation gives you a better understanding of your investment and allows you to better align it with your investment objectives. You don't have to beat the professionals, you just have to lose less money than you would by paying them to make the decision for you."
Financial health is typically assessed with 3 things.   Balance Sheet Cash Flow Analysis Profit &amp; Loss Statement  That should give you a pretty solid view on where the business has been, where it is now, and where it is headed. You also want to see any specific contracts currently in-place. Things like leases for property or facilities or any long term customer contracts.   I also often like to look at the last year's tax information. Pay attention to Retained Earnings, that'll tell you about the long term functioning of the business from a historical perspective.   Source: Am M&amp;A guy
"Stock returns cannot be evaluated on its own. You need to take into account inflation and the return of other investment vehicles. Over the long run, you want to earn more than your peers (ie inflation), or lose less than them. Stock lets you buy into the profits of a company managed by others. So the fundamental question is ""do those company managers make better decision than average person?"" Of course there are times when they make awful decisions (eg just before dotcom bubble), and sometimes the best decision is to close the business. But overall those people are much better educated, have higher IQ, more resourceful, etc, and so over long time and across all the companies, this is correct and hence the stock market premium."
I would look on http://seekingalpha.com/currents/earnings. You can also get copies of the conference calls for each company you are looking at. What you referred to is the conference call. The people who usually ask questions are professional analysts. I would recommend getting the transcript as it is easier to highlight and keep records of. I hope that helps
Research the company. Obtain and read their current and past financial statements. Find and read news stories about them. Look for patterns and draw conclusions. Or diversify to the point where one company failing doesn't hurt you significantly. Or both.
Dividend yield is not the only criteria for stock selection. Companies past performance, management, past deals, future expansion plans, and debt equity ratio should be considered. I would also like to suggest you that one should avoid making any investment in the companies that are directly affected by frequent changes in regulations released by government. All the above mentioned criteria are important for your decision as they make an impact on your investment and can highly affect the profits.
Do a common size analysis to  compare to its competitors. Also run a rqtio analysis to the industry. Explain the commonalities and differences as it pertains to the business.   A lot of big banks publish research on public companies and where they're headed in terms of financials. They are usually published for a fee but you can sometimes find them for free online.  It would be useful to talk about the current financial landscape like yellen, rate hikes etc if you wanna go there.
So for quarters So, if Q1's value was 10 and Q2's value was 25 For closing or opening prices, I would use closing prices.  For instance, some used Adjusted Close or Close on Yahoo Finance (see this example of AAPL). Added Note: In your example, for your example, you'll want to take the absolute value of the denominator (aka: divisor), so an Excel formula might look like the below example ... ... where the new and old are cells.
Also, you need to figure out what sort of comparable data to use that would be best. Meaning, will you have to use just call report data or are there some publicly traded banks your size that would be good matches? I assume you'll have plenty of publicly traded companies to use. I would suggest listening to the latest earnings calls too. The analysts that asks questions of the CEOor cfo are focusing on meaningful topics that might give you ideas. For example, they may ask about energy concentrations or other issues that are meaningful in today's environment.
Relative valuation is always my go to. Reason being i can make any company a buy or sell by changing assumptions such as growth rate, discount rate ect with a DCF. Still a great exercise to complete on all investments. Also an RV will help you pick the best out of the group (hopefully) rather than take  a stance on whether you can actually predict the future inputs ( no one can)
"My experience with different brands in the US this year is $250 and $400.  If this is the differential in you choosing a brand for a rental, best to call the reservation number for each contender and ask what their hold will be. I am not sure what a ""definitive"" answer would be.  There is a tension between ""risk mitigation"" and ""poisoning your brand reputation"" that each company will answer differently, and answer differently over time. Even an actuarial answer has to be transformed into company policy through competing soft factors."
I had the same problem and was looking for a software that would give me easy access to historical financial statements of a company, preferably in a chart. So that I could easily compare earnings per share or other data between competitors. Have a look at Stockdance this might be what you are looking for.  Reuters Terminal is way out of my league (price and complexity) and Yahoo and Google Finance just don't offer the features I want, especially on financials. Stockdance offers a sort of stock selection check list on which you can define your own criterion’s. Hence it makes no investment suggestions but let's you implement your own investing strategy.
For example, lets say I'm looking at search providers (i.e. Baidu, Google, Yahoo, etc.) I'd be looking at Cost-Per-Thousand-Clicks (CPTC) and number of clicks on the website. Multiply the two and I get revenue (very simplified version) for clicks business. I might then also forecast other revenue driving segments and try to understand how they are growing/pricing at an individual segment level (i.e. business services or mobile advertising). I'd then break down costs/margins for each segment and forecast those out. I could then get a forward EPS, get a range of multiples I believe it could trade in (i.e. I think the multiple will trade up/down), to get a target price. Also, I would likely do a DCF analysis on forward earnings to get a ""fair market value,"" and then try to triangulate a price. I would also be looking at stuff like management teams and industry trends, too, but bottom line, I'm pitching a company because I think it is undervalued and will outperform competitors **in the long run**. This type of work tends to be more research oriented and is what most (not all) mutual funds use when analyzing companies. Since mutual funds tend to have longer holding periods (2-10 years), as opposed to short-term, it's harder to justify investing in a company only because it has a short-term catalyst. Anecdotally, it's also easier to present in a written thesis because the numbers tend to be more concrete and easier to forecast than top-down (which have wider target ranges). Your thought process that catalyst + industry context = market beating returns isn't wrong, it's just that every company thinks about investing differently, and it's important to tailor the report to that group's style."
What exactly does the balance sheet of a software company tell you? The majority of meaningful assets are inside your employees' heads.   You can't capitalize R&amp;D and depreciate it, it's a straight flow through to the income statement. And you can't put human capital on a balance sheet.  Software firms generally carry little to no debt and their cap structure is almost all equity. What are you going to put up for collateral when your product is bits and bytes?
"The mathematics site, WolframAlpha, provides such data. Here is a link to historic p/e data for Apple. You can chart other companies simply by typing ""p/e code"" into the search box.  For example, ""p/e XOM"" will give you historic p/e data for Exxon. A drop-down list box allows you to select a reporting period : 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, all data.  Below the chart you can read the minimum, maximum, and average p/e for the reporting period in addition to the dates on which the minimum and maximum were applicable."
There isn't really a correct answer. The 1 year beta will capture any recent changes in the firm's business, but it is estimated less accurately due to fewer data points. But a beta of 0.22 for a distressed firm is very suspicious, since we would expect the stock to be more risky, not less.
Bloomberg is very popular, especially for researching individual companies. Market QA and Factset are popular for analyzing data. Microsoft Excel and Matlab are very common for analyzing the data.  Lots of time traders will take data from Bloomberg, Market QA, Factset or where ever, and then actually preform their analytics in Excel or Matlab. A lot of the brokers provide their own software to traders using their platform, and that software can also contain different tools to help the traders as well.
"Calculating beta is finding the correlation between the dependent variable, MSCI world benchmark, and the independent variable, your companies. If you know how to run liner regression models, run each company as the independent variable with the dependent MSCI. You can use Excel to gather this result (Y = MSCI price change at closing hour while X = company stock price closing prince). Running the regression will give you the Beta (and alpha when doing portfolios); which (from linear algebra) is the ""m"" in y = mx + b"
Broadly, there's a bunch of stuff you need to be accounting for that's not reflected in the above, which will impact the A/D profile of an acquisition:  * Consideration paid (all cash on substantially the same terms is going to be more accretive than an all-stock transaction...because in the latter, your denominator is much bigger)  * Shares outstanding (including repurchases, in-kind dividends and option exercise)  * Financing / interest expense  * Upside / base / downside case for all of your assumptions - best to have a toggle based on a CHOOSE function that will allow the user to easily toggle between these  I'm not sure what EBITDA is getting you. EPS accretion/dilution typically looks at earnings, but you could also look at Cash EPS A/D which measures OCF/shares outstanding.  The point is, this really depends on how back of the envelope you want the A/D computation to be. At a minimum, you need an earnings schedule projected over the next 2-3 years, and you need a schedule reflecting outstanding shares over the same time period.  Your earnings buildout can have varying degrees of granularity. You can project cost synergies over the forecast period, which most obviously is going to affect your earnings, but you can also drill down further. Financing, transaction fees, etc. Your writeups and writedowns from your B/S combination may result in certain deferred tax items that will affect your bottom line over the forecast period.  Your share schedule can also have varying degrees of complexity. One way to do it is to just presume that the company will not issue any more shares, and will not repurchase any shares, and that there will be no options exercised, over the forecast period. This is a bad series of assumptions. It is likely that as options vest, if in the money, they will be exercised, resulting in dilution for existing shareholders. It is also likely that certain preferred shareholders and optionholders are going to experience adjustments to the conversion prices based on antidilution provisions in their securities. These may be but are not always disclosed in the 10K.  Last point - models are tools. What are you trying to build an accretion/dilution model for? This will affect and determine the degree of granularity you'll want to go into.