I Did Not Know Damodaran Had a Blog

Aswath Damodaran has written a couple of excellent textbooks (on valuation and corporate finance), both of which are among my core reference materials. He also wecasts his valuation class at NYU (available here)

But I didn't know that he also has a blog - Musings on Markets. Just a quick glance over the last couple of months gave me several good articles to read:

High Dividend Stocks: Do They Beat the Market?

Capital Structure: Optimal or Opportunistic?

What if Nothing is Risk Free?

He doesn't update regularly (but who am I to talk). In any event, check it out.

HT: Finance Clippings

The Ideas Report

I just came across an interesting new blog: the Ideas Report for Serious Investors. It's put out by the Manual of Ideas (a for-fee service) and obviously) geared towards investing. However, it ranges pretty far afield. Check it out.

A Good Private Equity Blog

Thanks to Analyst Forum (one of my regular stops), I just came across a pretty good blog on Private Equity called The Private Equiteer. It has a lot of posts that go through the basics of the private equity world (here's a list of many of them).

I'm adding it to the blogroll.

Another Blog - The Investor's Consigliere

What can I say. They had me at the name.

Fama and French Have a Blog

There are few finance academics who's work is more well known (and cited) than Eugene Fama and Kenneth French. It turns out that they just started blogging. In their first few posts, they've touched on the bailout, government regulations, whether the recent turmoil is evidence against market efficiency, and more. You can read it here - I'd highly recommend adding it into your feed reader. After all, it's Fama and French (need I say more?)

And a thanks to regular reader Jeff V. for the tip.

The NYU Finance Department Has a Blog!

NYU has one of the largest and best finance faculties around (most surveys place them squarely in the top 5 programs in terms of research output). It turns out that they now have a blog: Stern Finance.

It looks pretty promising. Although it's less than 2 months old (the first post was made on September 26), it already has a lot of high-quality content, with participation from a pretty large nuimnber of the faculty. Just this last month, it has posts by Viral Acharya, Marti Subramanyam, Edward Altman, and Joel Hasbrouk among others).

It's definitely one to add to your feed reader.

New Blog

As a new blogger, Financial Rounds benefitted from a number of higher-profile bloggers mentioning it. So, I think it's important to pay the favor forward and highlight new blogs of note.

The latest new one is a put out by The Applied Portfolio Management Program at Washburn University.

Unlike other academic blogs, this one is unique in that material is contributed both by faculty and by students in the program.

Go check it out, and add them to your feed reader - it's been added to the blogroll. And if you come across any other ones, drop me a line.

Another Good Investment Banking Blog

The other day, while looking for ways to avoid studying for the CFA exam, I came across another pretty good blog on Investment Banking. It's titled "The Prince of Wall Street". Here's the Prince himself describing his blog:

...Prince of Wall Street is a regularly updated finance blog featuring original finance news, gossip, trades, and commentary. The commentary predominately focuses on M&A, private equity, hedge funds, and investment banking.

Now some basic personal information about The Prince. He is a senior at a prestigious college awaiting the start of his first full-time job as an investment banking analyst at a bulge bracket bank. He did three summer analyst stints at a prestigious bulge-bracket investment bank and then signed on to work full-time in the Financial Sponsors Group. He worked in prime brokerage sales for two summers. It is fitting that The Prince would study Philosophy and Economics as an undergraduate. The Prince also spent a term at University College in Oxford (god save the queen, and The Prince).

This blog was started when The Prince realized he spent way too much time reading finance blogs and newspapers. He hopes to also share some of the humor that goes along with working in banking and give some perspective to prospective investment bankers on what life is really like as an analyst. Even if his readers decide his commentary and analysis is wrong, he hopes they at least find it thought-provoking. That is all my loyal subjects.

He's got a nice touch - he writes mostly in the third-person, has a good sense of humor, and uses a lot of references to Machiavelli (hence the title). My limited reading gives me a sense that while the blog covers a pretty good range of IB-related topics, it would be particularly interesting to students (both grad and undergrad) hoping to break into the IB field. So, I'll be adding it to my blogroll.

Check out the blog here.

Enough bloggery - back to CFA review.

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A New Website On The Investment Banking Field

A while back I came across a pretty good website for those of you who are looking to break into the Investment Banking field - Mergers and Inquisitions. Here's their "about" section:

Mergers & Inquisitions was launched after the author realized the web lacked good, free resources on investment banking, finance jobs and career advice in general for college students and recent graduates.

Most existing guides such as the Vault Guide To Finance Interviews or the Wet Feet guide are dry and don’t have much in the way of frank, practical advice with concrete examples. They’re also so boring that you may want to poke out your eyes after reading them (just kidding :). There are some high-quality finance-related sites and blogs out there, like Leveraged Sellout, Wall Street Oasis, and several others, but these have a different focus from what we’re doing here.

Since the author would like to keep his job (at least for now), he will have to remain anonymous. Feel free to email him. For resume review services, please refer to the resume review page.

The author seems to have just the right mix of helpful information and humor that should make it a hit. In addition, he's been doing it since November, 2007, so it looks like he might be around for a while.

I've added it to the sidebar, and also to my list of regular reads. Enjoy.

Another New Academic Finance Blog

I think it's good practice to mention new blogs of note -- I got some mention by established bloggers early on, and it helped a lot. So, I try pass the favor along and mention new blogs as I come across them - particularly when they're finance or academic in nature.

In this case, here's one that's both: Finance Clippings, run by Richard Warr, a finance professor at North Carolina State University.

I've read Richard's work (and enjojed it) for years, and have even crossed paths with him at conferences on a number of occasions. He seems to have both the academic chops and personal characteristics necessary to make for a good blog. Based on his first few posts, he seems to be off to a good start, and is focusing on material that he'll use in his classes.

So welcome to the Blogosphere, Richard.

Now everyone go check out his blog -- it's been added to the blogroll.

Financial Rounds? Genius!

The Blog Readability Test supposedly determines what level of education is necessary to understand a blog. Here's Financial Rounds' result:

Nuff said. My sense is that it just picks up that I occasionally use big words.

In case you're interested, I found the site from Trainee Trader, which lists the results from a number of popular finance blogs.