Tutorials and Other Resources

MINI CLASSES

Mini-classes are offered to facilitate faculty and student understanding and ability to use the financial technologies available in the Trading Room. Taught by one of the Trading Room assistants, these 60-minute sessions provide understanding of the basic functionality of each platform.

A complete list of upcoming classes is posted on our calendar. There is no need to register for a class; simply show up five to 10 minutes before the class is scheduled to begin, and inform the assistant on duty that you wish to participate. Provided below is a description of each mini class.

 

Bloomberg
The Bloomberg is the financial world’s one-stop platform for data, analytics, news, prices, communications and electronic trading.

Bloomberg seamlessly integrates real-time and historical information on more than five million bonds, equities, commodities, currencies and funds. The electronic library also comprises data on almost every publicly traded company and biographies of more than one million people. Everything is provided in a single terminal with dual screens so that information can be accessed, analyzed or archived with just a few keystrokes or clicks.

The Bloomberg community now comprises more than 300,000 financial professionals, corporate executives, lawyers and regulators in 125 countries. Virtually every leading bank, brokerage, insurance company, financial regulator and corporation is a subscriber with round-the-clock access to our network.


Crystal Ball Pro Mini Class
Crystal Ball Professional is a forecasting and risk analysis suite with three components: Crystal Ball 2000, CB Predictor, and OptQuest. Through simulation, Crystal Ball extends the forecasting capabilities of MS Excel and provides the information needed to make accurate, efficient and confident investment decisions. Probability distributions are used to define the possible outcomes for each variable in a spreadsheet model. Crystal Ball can fit a distribution to any historical data available. Then, by repeatedly sampling values for each variable, the program calculates hundreds — or even thousands — of possible outcomes in a few seconds. The program can also perform linear and nonlinear optimizations. Optimization is the process of finding the best, or optimal, solution for a problem. This technique is very important when analyzing model variables such as R&D expenditures that can be manipulated and controlled. For this reason, Crystal Ball is widely used by accounting, economics, finance, marketing, management, and mathematics professionals.


DataStream Advance
DataStream Advancedis a reporting and charting interface designed for use with DataStream's internationally renowned historical financial and economic databases. It supplies detailed index-related data across global markets, global and sector indices, global investment research as well as current and historical fundamental data from around the world with historical depth spanning more than 30 years. Along with all of this DataStream provides foreign exchange and money market data, real-time financial news and global economic forecast. DataStream’s graphical user interface enables retrieval and display of reports, charts, and data, and allows for the custom integration of requested information over a variety of reporting formats.


Excel
The Excel mini-class is an intermediate-level course designed to improve students’ analytical and quantitative skills. After taking this course, students are better able to analyze complex financial information for the purpose of making sound business decisions. Specifically, the students learn to interface Microsoft Excel with other Trading Room resources to acquire real-time and historical securities data. With this data, the participants use the Excel functions (fx) to calculate the mean, median, mode, minimum, maximum, variance, standard deviation, and other statistical parameters. Students then learn to analyze the data in the context of a portfolio by calculating the holding period return, weighted average return, correlation, covariance and other measures of risk and return required for portfolio optimization. Students are also exposed to the regression models, descriptive statistics, and time value of money functions available in Excel.


FactSet
FactSet Research Systems is a leading provider of financial and economic information to the global investment community. FactSet combines more than 200 databases into a single online system and provides the tools to download, combine, and manipulate widespread data for investment analysis.

The comprehensive and flexible tools allow students to perform company, fixed income, mutual fund, portfolio and economic analysis, chart the data, use a screening tool that searches more than 114,000 companies, build company comparisons, conduct modeling and retrieve real-time market data.

 

Mergent Horizon
Mergent Horizon is an online database that allows users to access up-to-date company information including stock prices, financials, key competitors, dependent suppliers and key customers.  The application identifies the specific lines of business that each target firm operates and decomposes the revenues generated by each functional division.  Mergent identifies the best fit sectors and most true competitors by identifying the largest revenue producing division and matching it to pure play proxy firms and to other competitors that generate revenues by selling similar products and services.  When listing competitors, Mergent categorizes the firms as focused or pure-play competitors based on the similarities of the division responsible for generating the revenues.  For companies competing in the healthcare and pharmaceuticals sectors Mergent offers detailed analysis of the company’s pipeline, the stage of FDA approval, side effects of the treatment, afflictions the drug is designed to treat, and compares specific drugs to others designed to treat similar afflictions.  Mergent also allows the user to create customized, user defined indexes of focused or pure-play companies.  The software’s screening tool allows users to screen the universe for companies meeting user defined criteria including, momentum and fundamental data, revenue by geography, or screen by FDA approval status and product, symptom, and side effect to narrow the selected field.  The application also has charting capabilities, SEC filings, custom reports, price data, and trade names for every company in the database.


Morningstar Investment Research Center
The Morningstar mini class provides students with a basic understanding of the functionality of the software. Morningstar provides detailed information on a broad array of mutual funds, including historical data (monthly, quarterly and annual), fund composition, portfolio screening, risk adjusted star-ratings, investment style boxes, and analyst reviews and commentaries. Morningstar also offers the ability to rank and compare funds, perform advanced analysis for research purposes, and construct and analyze mutual fund portfolios.

 

Thomson ONE Analytics
The Thomson ONE mini class provides students with a basic understanding of the software. Thomson ONE Analytics is a global research network that provides up-to-date information on analyst notes, earnings estimates that can be used for stock valuation. By taking this class, students will acquire the skills necessary to obtain:

  • Analyst notes
  • Earnings estimates
  • Company fundamentals
  • Analyst ratings (recommendations)

Thomson ONE also allows users to perform searches on the following categories:

  • Alerts
  • Broker
  • Company
  • Corporate Release
  • Industry
  • Subject

 

WONDA
William O'Neil Direct Access (WONDA) is an on-line institutional investment data research tool incorporating state-of-the-art screening capability on over 3,800 data items. Designed by investment professionals with a culmination of over 35 years of hands-on experience, WONDA can be easily adapted to any investment style. The system combines company fundamentals, earnings estimates, industry group statistics, corporate data, and many of the most powerful technical tools available in the industry including its own proprietary ratings. Features of WONDA Includes:

  • Access to William O'Neil's Datagraph™ information on over 8,000 securities
  • Customized screens
  • Custom Data Blocks
  • Company Fundamental Data
  • Company Quarterly Performance Data
  • Sponsorship and Investor Information
  • Relative Strength Ratings
  • Access to Down Jones News Service, including its TNT service
  • Moving Average Alerts
  • Annotations and Transaction Records
  • Technical Analysis
  • Mutual Fund Rankings and Ownership
  • Comparative Graphs

                                                                                          

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TUTORIALS

After completing the mini-classes and workshops, students have the opportunity to use a growing number of self-paced tutorials. With two monitors at each workstation, students can access the tutorials and financial technologies simultaneously. Each tutorial is comprised of three distinct sections: a description of the functionality (and primary uses) of the software or data feed; an application of the resource, such as screening for investment worthy securities in FactSet Universal Screener or conducting sensitivity analysis using Crystal Ball; and interpretation of the data acquired.

Course-related Tutorials

GB 101
The first course in the General Business core curriculum is GB101 which allows students to take a look at every aspect of starting and running a company. This tutorial, through a step by step process, will allow the students to analyze a company from an industry standpoint and then dive deeper into the specific components of the company. When looking at a specific company, through the use of such programs as FactSet and Reuters, students are able to look at the structure and strategy of a company, analyze the company’s financials and much more.

 

GB 201
The second level of the General Business core curriculum introduces students to the fundamentals of accounting and accounting principles. Throughout the course, students learn the basics of financial statement analysis. This tutorial utilizes FactSet to fully examine a company through fundamental analysis. Students will analyze companies by researching financial statements, news, and other company data. Along with FactSet, students will access professional opinions and earnings estimates through the Thomson One Analytics software. The knowledge gained through this tutorial will help determine reasoning for buying, holding, or selling their assigned company.   

 

GB 202
The third level of the General Business core curriculum focuses on the fundamentals of financial reporting. Different accounting models, transaction analytics, and accounting information systems are introduced. This tutorial, through the use of FactSet and Microsoft Excel, allows students to search for a company, its competitors and all current and historic financial statements. Competitors can be selected using pre-made models or through the discretion of the students own criteria. Along with financial statements, students have access to broker details as well as past and current estimates for the company. Students are able to view a company’s financials as reported to the SEC as well as in the common size format for comparison purposes.


GB 301
The fourth level of the General Business core curriculum allows students to adopt a company as its own and see first hand the impact of the financial, operational and marketing aspects of running a business. The course emphasizes the creation and delivery of value to the customer through the process of determining the needs and wants of the target customer group. This tutorial is designed to help the student find and download historical ratios for a company, its main competitors and the industry that it falls in. Using FactSet as the main search platform, students will be shown how to find a company’s competitors and then customize FactSet to find the desired comparable ratios.


FI 305
FI 305 serves as a bridge between courses in accounting and finance. Several intermediate accounting topics are covered first, followed by an examination of approaches to analyzing financial statement data.  The course then provides an overview of valuation, with an application to the valuation of financial securities.  

 

FI 320
FI 320 is the second of a two course sequence that allows students to dive deeper in to the markets of equities, bonds and options. Through the use of FactSet, Bloomberg and Microsoft Excel students will learn how to choose securities based on universe and statistical parameters. They will then calculate key statistics based on this new portfolio (such as Beta) to see how the relationship of the portfolios components work with each other and if reallocation (or weighting) is needed.


Interview Research Tutorial
An extremely important part of the interview process is gathering information about the company that one is interviewing with to appear knowledgeable about that firm. The Interview Research tutorial offered in the Trading Room prepares students for interviews by teaching them to use a variety of different resources in order to gather key pieces of information. Some of the information that is available to students would be company information, industry information, product/service offerings, promotion techniques and much more. In order for the students to access this information a number of programs will be utilized along with a number of other on-campus resources. Software that is available to students for use during this process includes Thomson One Analytics, FactSet, Bloomberg as well as many others.

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