Putting the CFA curriculum to use

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jrs130

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So I just wrote LV II and want to put what I've learned to use so a question to all you analyst out there.

Where should I begin ? What's a good company/industry to start with that isn't going to be riddled with a million adjustments, subsidiaries left and right, etc, etc.

Just a straight basic company or industry that I can start with and build up from there?

Thanks
 
Check out WD 40. It doesn't really get any easier than that.

If you want something slightly more challenging, I would look at a staffing company. You basically have a couple of divisions, usually split by profession or geography, where sales people try to place recruits with clients (hiring companies). The books are usually clean with no unusual accounting practices (the worst you might see is a goodwill write down for most staffers), the strategy / business model is easy to understand, and they are pretty easily comparable to one another as long as you seperate them by blue / white collar staffing. Try Robert Half (RHI) to start with. As a bonus, if you watch the stock for an extended period of time (1-2 years), you will gain some insight into how cyclical stocks move in a recovery period (you could compare this to relevant economic data like jobs numbers, for example). Hope that helps, good luck.
 
Id pick a small cap company and then move forward. I would pick something I like or want to learn about like solar technology or if you want one in the mature phase, take ur pick...itll keep it interesting.
 
Actually, what I would really do is pick half a dozen industries and knock out five companies in each industry in fairly short order by reading the annual reports. You don't need to fuss too much with the numbers. Read the 10-Ks, look at the statements, play around with the numbers a bit, and then move on. It's very helpful to compare / contrast different industries and business models. You can dig deeper into the modeling, etc. later. Most good investing is more about understanding structural characteristics of businesses and what makes a company good (and at a cheap valuation) than it is about out gunning other investors on next quarter's earnings in your Excel model. After you see a bunch of industries, you can pick a handful of companies to follow and build models for those if you like.
 
Take a report from Bloomberg and see if you can follow every line in there.
 
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