Computer Skills Required for Analysts

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tyler4040

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For you analysts out there, what types of software do you use on a daily basis? Also would you consider yourselves experts with it? Also what is needed for risk management, ER, etc.?
 
tyler4040 wrote:
For you analysts out there, what types of software do you use on a daily basis? Also would you consider yourselves experts with it? Also what is needed for risk management, ER, etc.?
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Top 3 in order of importance:
1. Excel
2. Excel
3. Excel
Anything else will depend on the products you’re working on and specific role. Also, there really aren’t any industry standards in this business, different firms use different systems whether homegrown or from a third party.
Some possibilities are Bloomberg, Factset, Reuters 3000/Eikon, POINT, Yieldbook, Bondedge, Intex. Most of these are fixed income centric but I’m sure someone can chime in with some Equity stuff, maybe some of the S&P products.
 
Excel - there are some great video tutorials from lynda.com that I used in order to familiarize myself with the shortcuts & the new features.
 
I think ti is helpful to know VBA. I wish I knew more about VBA. Also, knowledge of the bloomberg terminal is good as well.
 
Excel w/ no keyboard, VBA and possibly this “R” I keep hearing about. Anything else will tend to be job specific and you’ll learn it there.
 
I’ve spent several years as a sell-side and buy-side research analyst, and also some time in private equity/leveraged buyouts too. I can say that the most commonly used software really is Excel. We also used FactSet, CapitalIQ and Bloomberg, but obviously none of these require any advanced technical skills and can be learned on the job.
 
chibwack wrote:
Excel w/ no keyboard, VBA and possibly this “R” I keep hearing about. Anything else will tend to be job specific and you’ll learn it there.
Click to expand...
Whoops hah, I meant no mouse.
 
I hate to repeat but Excel, how to decipher news, and use a research platform are the basics. By the way I work with a TR Eikon platform and if you can do without the Bloomberg messenger you would be pleasantly surprised at its capabilities at a significantly reduced cost. PM if you have any specific questions.
 
chibwack wrote:
chibwack wrote:
Excel w/ no keyboard, VBA and possibly this “R” I keep hearing about. Anything else will tend to be job specific and you’ll learn it there.
Click to expand...
Whoops hah, I meant no mouse.
Click to expand...
haha. excel with no keyboard, I’d like to see that one.
 
Excel seems to be most important (combined with add-ons from e.g. Bloomberg).
At the moment I wish I knew BIRT Spreadsheet and Crystal Reports, combined with deep SQL knowledge and outer and inner joins etc.
 
Excel is pretty standard for most stuff. A lot of the shortcuts help.
A little VBA can add an extra “pow” to your excel work.
R/Matlab is good for modeling and running simulations of stuff too complex to do in excel. It’s nice for scripting too.
I like Stata for stats, though I might do stats in R as well just because I use it so much.
It’s useful to know how to navigate Bloomberg or CapitalIQ or FactSet, but ultimately it shouldn’t take long to pick up the aspects of these systems that you need.
 
Eviews is for kids :P…j/k….when i was writing my dissertation the school i attended was migrating away from using EVIEWS in lectures/seminars because (according to the proffessors) it was not powerful enough…instead we were encouraged to use S-PLUS/MATLAB
 
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