Learn financial analysis from the best.
The complete beginner’s guide.
The complete beginner’s guide.
No experience required - all are welcome!
From broad concepts to quantitative techniques and actual Excel formulas.
Video on demand, with prompt support from friendly experts.
All aspiring:
Entrepreneurs Investors Finance Professionals… basically, anyone who needs to get smart on accounting, finance, and Excel at the fraction of the cost/time of an academic degree.
What’s the “buy side” and the “sell side”? Who does what on Wall Street?
You know what an investment is, and what banking is… but what about investment banking?
We’ve put together one canonical starting place for the basics of accounting/finance, regardless of your background.
Can’t name the 3 financial statements? No problem. We’ll walk you through them, seeing how they’re all intertwined.
With the basics out of the way, we progress to corporate valuation: how much is a company worth?
Here is where we begin getting our hands dirty in Excel!
Fill your toolbox with only the most useful Excel functions and techniques.
These universal formulas and best practices will keep you zipping through Excel for years to come.
Our approach is to teach you how to fish, rather than give you a fish.
We don't give a one-way lecture where you memorize every cell and formula.
We nudge you toward uncovering answers on your own by leading with the right questions.
The end result? Longer-term knowledge retention that will last an entire career.
I really felt that WST was world class and would recommend it to anyone starting a new career on Wall Street. In particular, the strength of the program is that it concentrates on how analytical work is actually conducted in real life rather than the academic approach of some other competitors.
Our Self-Study platform lets you learn at your own pace via instructor-led videos.
Jump start your financial analysis skills and start learning today!
Note: Be sure to enter the discount code FF199 during checkout to receive the $199 rate.
All prices are in USD and denote six (6) months of access. Terms apply.
This program covers the basics of financial accounting including the major financial statements (Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow) and the most important components of each as it relates to financial analysis. Concentration is placed on the integration of the financial statements and provides a full integrated grasp of accounting from a finance perspective.
2.5 hours / 4 hours
“How to Analyze a 10-K” builds upon basic accounting and financial statements concepts to focus on the major components of a 10K SEC filing, including the Management Discussion & Analysis, Financial Condition and Results and how to analyze the myriad of footnotes.
It’s simply not enough to merely analyze the financial statements, but especially critical to plow through and understand the footnotes and the management discussion & analysis, where the most of the qualitative information is contained. The challenge is that there are a myriad of footnotes and figuring out which are the important and relevant ones is no small feat. This course provides the overview and analysis for most major common footnotes and gives you a starting point to plow in deeper when we build our financial models. The irony is that in the process of crunching numbers and building numbers, reading comprehension, particularly on the 10K is probably even more important in terms of getting the right inputs.
2 hours / 3 hours
Learn the basic finance concepts that are the backbone of any financial analysis. An understanding of these basic core tools is absolutely critical to mastering any Wall Street analysis. Topics covered include risk / return trade-offs, time value of money, cost of capital, Gordon growth model and basic valuation theories.
Moving beyond the accounting and 10K analysis, this course provides an introduction to the major concepts in finance that many people take for granted. Understanding financial modeling, valuation, and the capital markets in general would be difficult without a full grasp of these fundamental concepts.
1.5 hours / 2 hours
Company profiles are the most basic overview and descriptions of a company being analyzed. Profiles supply the most basic and fundamental, yet probably the most important aspects of a company. Gain an introduction and explanation of the major components of a profile for a publicly traded company.
1 hour / 1 hour
Build very quick financial summary and trading statistics exhibit using historical results, analyst estimates & basic assumptions in Excel. This course will allow you to understand basic structure of building an analysis in Excel and navigating through and becoming efficient in Excel.
1.5 hours / 2 hours
This course builds upon, and implements in Excel, the fundamental financial analysis and valuation topics. Create a top-down, five year income statement projection model and then construct a basic discounted cash flow analysis on top of your projection model.
** Don’t get thrown off by the word “basic” - this Basic Financial Modeling serves as the fundamental basis for all of our additional Excel-based courses. Before you “graduate” onto our advanced modeling courses, we HIGHLY recommend you take this course for the full background on working efficiently in Excel the way we want you to, otherwise you may have a much steeper learning curve in our other classes. **
4 hours / 5 hours
Build upon Corporate Valuation Methodologies with a short, hands-on exercise to hone in the core concepts in practice before diving into the more advanced valuation modeling topics. Translate the valuation concepts into real-life case study that demonstrates and shows the valuation principles.
1.5 hours / 2 hours
Learn how corporations are valued and the major analytical tools that are used. Go beyond academic theory to real-world methods as used by professionals; includes a crucial primer to Corporate Finance and its non-theoretical application. Apply learning objectives and goals immediately by analyzing a $6 billion+ transaction. Topics covered include: (i) how to value a company (trading comps, deal comps, DCF, LBO, break-up and asset valuation); (ii) importance of Enterprise Value, EBITDA, capital structure, leverage and WACC; (iii) analyze valuation multiples and ratios; why are PE ratios sub-optimal as a valuation metric?; (iv) practical, non-theoretical application of introduction to corporate finance.
2 hours / 2.5 hours
This course focuses on how learning the fundamental building blocks of Excel so you can begin to take advantage and leverage all of Excel’s true capabilities. In order to efficiently build models and crunch large data dumps in Excel, one must master the basics before the advanced content. Learn relevant financial formulas, proper navigation, formatting of files and worksheets, creating calculations in cells, and linking between worksheets/tabs. Functions and tools covered in this course include: mathematical, financial, logic, date/time formulas; data manipulation; anchoring; data tables; and building a capstone model. Emphasis will be on using shortcut keys, simplifying steps, and manipulating data. You will leave with techniques you can use immediately, allowing you to work faster and with less effort.
3 hours / 5 hours
Introduction to the major jargon and finance terminology in finance. What exactly is the sell-side and the buy-side and do they affect the capital markets and why do they have a symbiotic relationship? What exactly is investment banking, sales & trading and research? How is it that asset management is the flip opposite and yet very similar at the same time? Put those questions to rest with this Overview of Financial Markets overview.
1 hour / 1 hour
1 hour / 1.5 hours