Intro to Excel for Finance

August 18, 2010 8:39 AM

Help me make a smooth transition into a new job in finance. I need to brush up on technical skills, most likely via excel.

I've been working in biglaw for the last two years but recently have been accepted for a position in a financial services company as a hedge fund market report analyst. The job requires me to aggregate quarterly and snapshot reports on the performance of said hedgefunds, most ostensibly through writing recaps as well as performing some degree of financial analysis.

In my current job (as well as my undergrad background of economics/english), I do very little financial calculations/pivot tables/vlookup in excel (mostly simple sum/aggregate functions, organizational spreadsheets) and such. I'd like to get a jumpstart by immersing myself in some of the principles of finance via excel.

Are there any website, coursebooks, literature or references you'd recommend? I'm generally versed in statistics/mathematics/macro but again haven't been using them for some times in the capacity of my profession.

Through some rudimentary googling, I've found this coursebook:
http://pfe.wharton.upenn.edu/
Any experiences with it? Is it comprehensive? Simple enough to guide oneself through?

Ideally, I'd like to get my feet wet within 2-3 weeks of intensive work.

Many thanks,

posted by Hurst to Work & Money (3 answers total)

assuming you already signed a contract and ostensibly the nondisclosure agreements, asked for a sample from a typical analyst report. That way you can narrow down what you need to do and look proactive at the same time. there's so many different books on different topics and plug-ins that it's hard to make a recommendation or know what to do.
posted by chinabound at 9:07 AM on August 18, 2010

Here.
posted by dfriedman at 9:13 AM on August 18, 2010

http://www.wallstreetprep.com/

My genius Finance wonk friend swears by this program.
posted by smistephen at 10:00 AM on August 18, 2010 [1 favorite]