Data Analysis For Corporate Finance

Have you ever tried to learn to code or to use advanced visualization tools? If so, I am sure you know how daunting it is to learn by yourself. Generally, tools and books follow an encyclopedism approach, i.e., books attempt to teach every feature about a coding language or tool. This implies hundreds, if not thousands of pages simply to tackle a single topic, whether SQL, Python, MS Excel, MS PowerBI, you name it. The journey from zero to hero to become proficient using numerical and visualization tools to take your career to the next level becomes an ordeal that requires years and thousands of pages just to begin putting the pieces of the puzzle together. However, the reality is that you do not need to learn absolutely every available feature to use those tools and deliver a superior project. Rather than teaching you about the forest, I will discuss specific trees. Why? Because once you become familiar and confident nurturing a few trees, growing a forest becomes a simple process of planting new trees. This book provides the fundamental blocks so that you can learn about financial data science and take these tools and start using them tomorrow. The scope of the selected tools will empower you to see a considerable improvement in your financial modeling skills. The book is designed to provide corporate finance professionals the ability to start immediately using advance tools for concrete real-world tasks. Therefore, this book is all about functionalism. It is about providing you with tools that will put you to work and dramatically change the way you analyze data. Once you see the benefits, it will become natural to keep expanding your domain knowledge, leveraging today's endless available educational resources.

​This book presents both theory of financial data analytics, as well as comprehensive insights into the application of financial data analytics techniques in real financial world situations. It offers solutions on how to logically analyze the enormous amount of structured and unstructured data generated every moment in the finance sector. This data can be used by companies, organizations, and investors to create strategies, as the finance sector rapidly moves towards data-driven optimization. This book provides an efficient resource, addressing all applications of data analytics in the finance sector. International experts from around the globe cover the most important subjects in finance, including data processing, knowledge management, machine learning models, data modeling, visualization, optimization for financial problems, financial econometrics, financial time series analysis, project management, and decision making. The authors provide empirical evidence as examples of specific topics. By combining both applications and theory, the book offers a holistic approach. Therefore, it is a must-read for researchers and scholars of financial economics and finance, as well as practitioners interested in a better understanding of financial data analytics.

A complete set of statistical tools for beginning financial analysts from a leading authority Written by one of the leading experts on the topic, An Introduction to Analysis of Financial Data with R explores basic concepts of visualization of financial data. Through a fundamental balance between theory and applications, the book supplies readers with an accessible approach to financial econometric models and their applications to real-world empirical research. The author supplies a hands-on introduction to the analysis of financial data using the freely available R software package and case studies to illustrate actual implementations of the discussed methods. The book begins with the basics of financial data, discussing their summary statistics and related visualization methods. Subsequent chapters explore basic time series analysis and simple econometric models for business, finance, and economics as well as related topics including: Linear time series analysis, with coverage of exponential smoothing for forecasting and methods for model comparison Different approaches to calculating asset volatility and various volatility models High-frequency financial data and simple models for price changes, trading intensity, and realized volatility Quantitative methods for risk management, including value at risk and conditional value at risk Econometric and statistical methods for risk assessment based on extreme value theory and quantile regression Throughout the book, the visual nature of the topic is showcased through graphical representations in R, and two detailed case studies demonstrate the relevance of statistics in finance. A related website features additional data sets and R scripts so readers can create their own simulations and test their comprehension of the presented techniques. An Introduction to Analysis of Financial Data with R is an excellent book for introductory courses on time series and business statistics at the upper-undergraduate and graduate level. The book is also an excellent resource for researchers and practitioners in the fields of business, finance, and economics who would like to enhance their understanding of financial data and today's financial markets.

Statistical Analysis of Financial Data covers the use of statistical analysis and the methods of data science to model and analyze financial data. The first chapter is an overview of financial markets, describing the market operations and using exploratory data analysis to illustrate the nature of financial data. The software used to obtain the data for the examples in the first chapter and for all computations and to produce the graphs is R. However discussion of R is deferred to an appendix to the first chapter, where the basics of R, especially those most relevant in financial applications, are presented and illustrated. The appendix also describes how to use R to obtain current financial data from the internet. Chapter 2 describes the methods of exploratory data analysis, especially graphical methods, and illustrates them on real financial data. Chapter 3 covers probability distributions useful in financial analysis, especially heavy-tailed distributions, and describes methods of computer simulation of financial data. Chapter 4 covers basic methods of statistical inference, especially the use of linear models in analysis, and Chapter 5 describes methods of time series with special emphasis on models and methods applicable to analysis of financial data. Features * Covers statistical methods for analyzing models appropriate for financial data, especially models with outliers or heavy-tailed distributions. * Describes both the basics of R and advanced techniques useful in financial data analysis. * Driven by real, current financial data, not just stale data deposited on some static website. * Includes a large number of exercises, many requiring the use of open-source software to acquire real financial data from the internet and to analyze it.

This book draws readers’ attention to the financial aspects of daily life at a corporation by combining a robust mathematical setting and the explanation and derivation of the most popular models of the firm. Intended for third-year undergraduate students of business finance, quantitative finance, and financial mathematics, as well as first-year postgraduate students, it is based on the twin pillars of theory and analytics, which merge in a way that makes it easy for students to understand the exact meaning of the concepts and their representation and applicability in real-world contexts. Examples are given throughout the chapters in order to clarify the most intricate aspects; where needed, there are appendices at the end of chapters, offering additional mathematical insights into specific topics. Due to the recent growth in knowledge demand in the private sector, practitioners can also profit from the book as a bridge-builder between university and industry. Lastly, the book provides useful information for managers who want to deepen their understanding of risk management and come to recognize what may have been lacking in their own systems.

The new edition of this influential textbook, geared towards graduate or advanced undergraduate students, teaches the statistics necessary for financial engineering. In doing so, it illustrates concepts using financial markets and economic data, R Labs with real-data exercises, and graphical and analytic methods for modeling and diagnosing modeling errors. These methods are critical because financial engineers now have access to enormous quantities of data. To make use of this data, the powerful methods in this book for working with quantitative information, particularly about volatility and risks, are essential. Strengths of this fully-revised edition include major additions to the R code and the advanced topics covered. Individual chapters cover, among other topics, multivariate distributions, copulas, Bayesian computations, risk management, and cointegration. Suggested prerequisites are basic knowledge of statistics and probability, matrices and linear algebra, and calculus. There is an appendix on probability, statistics and linear algebra. Practicing financial engineers will also find this book of interest.

This textbook presents a comprehensive treatment of the legal arrangement of the corporation, the instruments and institutions through which capital can be raised, the management of the flow of funds through the individual firm, and the methods of dividing the risks and returns among the various contributors of funds. Now in its second edition, the book covers a wide range of topics in corporate finance, from time series modeling and regression analysis to multi-factor risk models and the Capital Asset Pricing Model. Guerard, Gultekin and Saxena build significantly on the first edition of the text, but retain the core chapters on cornerstone topics such as mergers and acquisitions, regulatory environments, bankruptcy and various other foundational concepts of corporate finance. New to the second edition are examinations of APT portfolio selection and time series modeling and forecasting through SAS, SCA and OxMetrics programming, FactSet fundamental data templates. This is intended to be a graduate-level textbook, and could be used as a primary text in upper level MBA and Financial Engineering courses, as well as a supplementary text for graduate courses in financial data analysis and financial investments.

A comprehensive textbook on data analysis for business, applied economics and public policy that uses case studies with real-world data.