Now, the story here is wider, because when you talk about being an analyst,
you may be an analyst in a financial company, in a bank, in an investment bank,
in a company that manages assets.
Then in this case, as an analyst,
you are likely to be working with these advanced models.
So here, you have to be more or less knowledgeable of mathematics, and
you have to be not only knowing what we've covered in this course,
but also some other, let's say, more advanced approaches.
But at the same time, if you study companies,
then you have to have a broader view.
For example, it's important for us to realize, for all of us,
that we oftentimes use the word black box here, but the project is not a black box.
In order to properly value the project,
you have to understand how it operates and how it produces value.
So the key value of an analyst is this ability to understand what's going on.
So when you study an investment project in a company,
you have to see the big picture.
You have to see how this project creates or destroys value.
And only then you will apply valuation techniques.
Oftentimes people who are poor analysts,
they immediately start calculating NPV with some off-the-cuff inputs,
and the results that they obtained are of low value.
And this is not the way to proceed in the career of an analyst.
Well, some long time ago, I was the director of research in
an investment bank, and I had a whole team of people.
And most of these people who were the best,
they really would go beyond the scope of just doing valuation.
They would really understand the industry, they would understand the trends,
they would understand what the may, what the forecast, and
what the perspectives are, and these people really did the best.
Now, this does require experience, and
the only way here is to keep working on these projects, on these valuations.
But at the same time, that should be done, like I said,
not in a very straightforward way.
You have to see the bigger picture all the time, and
you have to realize the context of what's going on in this company,
in this industry with this product, and so on and so forth.