Investment Valuation in India

DERIVATIVES Overview - Session 1 WHAT IS A DERIVATIVE?   A derivative is an instrument whose value is "derived" from the price of some underlying instrument, reference amount or index. It generally represents a contractual relationship between two parties. Cash flows are exchanged between parties based on price/index movements. The terms of the agreements may be customized or they may be standardized to facilitate exchange clearance. Customized agreements are usually referred to as Over The Counter Transactions. (OTC) Generally doesn’t require physical delivery of the reference asset. WHAT ARE DERIVATIVES USED FOR? Trading -  Speculation (e.g., bet on movements in an underlying security, index, interest rate, commodity, currency or other financial instruments).  -  Arbitrage (utilized by many fund managers to take advantage of expected market movements or arbitrage opportunities, hoping to decrease financing costs or increase yields on exis...

Sales are the lifeblood of any company, and getting a reasonable estimate of sales revenue scale and growth is highly critical in any ensuring business planning exercise, such as capital investment decisions, hiring of staff, expansion of business operations and allocation of operating budgets, etc. Hence, forecasting demand for a company’s products and services, and the resulting revenues accrued is probably the most critical step a financial analyst needs to undertake when building a financial model. In order to arrive at a realistic and reasonable revenue forecast for a business, a good financial analyst should conduct a detailed revenue modeling / demand analysis of a company’s products and services, by examining its usage potential and a customer’s willingness and ability to pay. A demand analysis would entail determining current demand and using assumptions for demand build up to predict future demand over the time period of the financial model. There are a number of qualitative ...

A good financial modeler has the discipline of adhering to a list of guiding principles to help ensure that the development of the financial model achieves the desired results. By following these simple steps, a financial modeler should be able to build a financial model that is simple, accurate and most importantly consistent, to help build confidence in a financial decision making process. Financial Modeling Discipline can be acquired in all 3 stages of the financial modeling process: Specification Stage Design Stage Build Stage Specification Stage Be very clear on the effort involved and the dependencies before committing to deadlines - the financial modeling exercise is usually on the critical path! Get the algebra right — make sure all revenues, cash flow inwards and assets are positive while expenses, cash outflows and liabilities are negative. This will ensure that we rarely use the minus sign in formulae and can use the sum() function. Avoid all calculations that will cause cir...