Soooo Long

Woah,

I'm done with research and I'm done with senior year. I'm actually done. There's a feeling I never thought I would experience.

With everything completely done, I honestly can't feel more overjoyed, relieved, and also sad at the same time. The last two years have been an amazing time, not only just with Seminar and Research, but also in so many other ways. I guess there's really nothing left to do but write this last post.

Research has been a pretty rewarding activity. I never thought that at the start of the year i would have a whole finance paper written. It's really taught me the value of hard work (and more importantly, of scheduling and consistent exertion). If it wasn't for the constant pressure of Mrs. Haag, I'm sure I would have fallen behind on research at some point down the line, but I'm really happy that I didn't.

The Capstone program has really drilled the importance of group work into me too. At the beginning of 11th grade, I honestly hated working in groups because most of the time it meant me doing all of the work. Communicating with other people more effectively, while also learning to be a lot less selfish helped a lot with that, and I'm a whole lot more enthusiastic about group projects now. That's a skill that's going to come in handy wherever I go: working through struggles with others is a daily part of college and life.

Looking back, Seminar and Research were entirely different beasts: research was so much more challenging and involved much more hard work. At the same time, though, I liked research so much more. At the start of the year, I was wondering if I liked finance enough. Now I know that I do. Being able to spend so much time on Finance-  a subject that, even though I spent a year on, still find as interesting as ever - has made me realize what I actually want to pursue in college. There's so much creativity and impact the subject can have upon others, and I know that I would love to study it.

For that, research has imparted a new focus for the next few years of my life. I know what I'm interested in, and I know how to pursue it.

Hopefully I have these same reflections four years when I'm writing a senior thesis a lot like I did this year in college.

For now,
Peace.

Presentation Weak

Hey Everyone,

This week is literally the final stretch for everything, and I can't wait to finish my presentations, and finally finish research. It's been a really great time, and I've definitely learned a lot.

Let's get right into the presentations. My first presentation on Friday was eh. Most of the material was there, but I still spoke too fast and had too many technical concepts up. I think the big problem was some of the material I decided to include in my slides. Basically, after talking to Mr. Molk, Mrs. Haag, and all the other wonderful teachers, I found out that a lot of the math I thought was important in the presentation really wasn't. So I took a lot of the math stuff out of my presentation (it's a lot more understandable now). Next, as I kind of suspected before, the tables for the multiple accuracy were way too complicated. I've substituted the tables for graphs instead. This both allows the audience to better understand what I'm talking about, and allows me to save time because I don't have to talk about the numbers that the tables produced in the graph. The last issue I had with my presentation on Friday was the lack of solid explanation for my methods, both in speech and on the slides.

Personally, I think I've fixed most of the mistakes I made on Friday. Saturday's presentation went MUCH better, and I now know the way that I should be explaining each slide and part of my research paper to other people. I have a few tweaks that I need to implement on my slides such as making certain bullet points more parallel, and clarifying certain figures, but for the most part, I'm feeling really confident about my presentation. When giving my actual presentation this Friday, I need to remember to speak very slowly and reiterate the definitions of certain key terms repeatedly. Even with a lot of the technical stuff removed from my presentation, it's still pretty hard to follow because of the esoteric nature of financial lingo.

Practice does make perfect, though, so for now, I'm working on the few critiques I got on Saturday (making sure I fully explain the initial drawbacks of market booms and citing one source), and I'm sure I'll be ready for Friday by the time by last practice presentation rolls around on Tuesday.

Cautiously Excited,
Akash

Two More Weeks FTW

THANK GOD,

College admissions are done, and now I don't have to worry about anything but research. That's still a lot to worry about though, so let me jump right in.

I'm going to be honest: I made a really bad presentation the first time. It was overly simplified, boring, and not really engaging. I hope I've fixed good a amount of that right now, but there's still a lot of improvement that needs to be done.

First and foremost, my slides were mostly pictures that were word associated with the title, not necessarily with exactly what I was speaking. Second, I barely had any words on my slides. That might be good for Seminar, but especially for a highly technical project like mine, it's almost completely unacceptable. Most of the people are going to have a hard time understanding what I'm saying anyways. Making the slides overly simplistic is going to confuse people. So, I've been adding a lot more animations and different slide formats to fix this problem. I've introduced some flow charts to make sure that the methods section is understood well, and I've included a lot more definitions in my literature review section.

In general, a research presentation is really different from a seminar presentation. A seminar presentation is basically a literature review section of the research presentation, but in my case, with much less technical information. That means in the Seminar presentation, I was able to get away with having lost of pictures and minimal words: because the subject matter didn't demand it as much. The purpose of Seminar was to introduce and explore an idea. The purpose of research is to introduce, explore, and discover something new, which requires a whole new level of understanding on the part of both the presenter and the audience. Because of that, it's important to ensure that the audience knows exactly what's going on, so that they can properly assess the quality of the research as well as the findings and conclusions. Therefore, having a lot of words is really important to make sure that the audience knows you know what your talking about and understands it too. This is especially true in really technical presentations like mine. If I don't explain what an IPO is in detail, the audience will never know what I'm going to be talking about later.

Because it is so essential that others understand my project and presentation, I'm going to mainly be presenting to my parents, and also my dogs, when my mom and dad are out of the house. It takes a lot of stress off. I'll roughly go through the script and make sure I touch on all of the points, and then film myself to make sure I'm not going too fast.

Signing Off,
Akash

I Live For the Applause

Sup Everyone,

This week I haven't really done much other than research, sleeping, and eating. I watched Manchester by the Sea for the first time, and honestly, it was the funniest movie about loss that I've ever seen. I'd highly recommend it. I guess it was also pretty cool to see UNC make the final four (my dad's a huge fan). Anywhoozies, we're supposed to talk about our presentations right now, so I guess I'll just do that.

First off, the rubric row for the presentations has literally nothing about the literature review. Because of this, it's important to minimize the amount of time spent talking about the literature review. Now for me (and most people that have to get really technical) that's a problem. I need to get the listener to understand what I'm saying, but also make sure I don't spend to much time on information. For that reason, I'm still working on adjusting my literature review section of my presentation, and I would really like people to help me out with that section because I can't really assess how other people are going to understand my presentation with some of the definition I provide in my literature review.

Apart from that, I've dedicated a lot of time to my methods and results section. I especially took some time to make sure my methods section came across as clear in the slides by including a diagram of exactly what I plan on doing. Knowing me, though, this could come across as amazingly incomprehensible, so it would also be nice to see if my explanation of the methods, both on the presentation and in the script, was actually effective.

Another thing that the rubric has explicitly outlined is talking about the assumptions that you made in the literature review, why you made those assumptions, and what impact they had upon your research, and how you would revise those assumptions. This section is in my discussion section when I talk about intangible assets and positive investor sentiment. I realize that my explanations for why I made the assumptions might not be the strongest, so please tell me if you have a problem with it.

Aside from that, I tried to make my slides with as minimal words as possible and tried to provide comparisons between methods whenever they were needed. They could, of course, be way too much. Most people told me that my tables weren't too much for the paper, but I want to make sure they aren't too much for the presentation as well, because a lot people aren't going to look at the whole table during the presentation.

Here's praying for the next week.

Shocked that I Finished Kind of Early for Once,
Akash

Feeling Out the Future

Hey Everyone,

This week has honestly been pretty relaxing. I edited my discussion, went to an amazing Model UN conference, and ate the best tacos ever.

Anyways, let's get into my research. Last week's comment groups were really helpful for pointing out the flaws in my paper. The good thing is that the worries I had with my results section were alleviated. I do still have a lot of other things to worry about though. So the first issue that I need to take care of in my paper is the transitions in my literature review. I think, although many of my transitions were pretty good, I need to work on transition into an analysis of the different valuation methods better, as well as a transition into the specific firms I am choosing to analyze better. I think the big problem here is the weird way I phrase some of my sentences, so I'm going to go through each sentence in these sections and just revise and rewrite them if necessary. The second thing I need to include in my literature review is more specific examples of the interactions that are present in the post-IPO process in order to help my reader better understand exactly what I intend on analyzing.

Moving on to my methods section, a lot of people were saying that the statistics and math in the section was still to overbearing. For this reason, I have started and will continue to remove some of  the math terms that I originally had in my paper. Instead, I'm just replacing these sentences with a description of whatever the formula's purpose is in my paper. That way, if people gloss over my manipulations, they still understand what it actually does.

In the results section, I really only have one problem that I have worked on and am continuing to work on. In the section after I provide a table of the pricing errors for multiples, I have another table describing how significantly different the multiples are from one another. I need to do a better job of explaining this table and differentiating it from the tables preceding it. Otherwise, the section becomes confusing and seemingly redundant.

Finally, in my discussion section, I need to work on few things. First, I need more structure to the section. This means that I need better transitions and synthesis when explaining how my results relate to Lie and Ritter's study in my discussion section. This is of particular importance because it sets up some of the explanations I provide later. Second, with my explanations, I need to actually explain certain claims I make more. For example, I never really explain why intangible assets can lower short term net income, but increase growth prospects. Third, I need to fix my ending. Most people found the phrasing awkward and a bit corny, and I'll be working on fixing that in the next week.

In regards to the rubric, I think my strongest points are definitely in my results and literature review sections, where I provide fairly good transitions and explanations of whatever I'm discussing. The big parts of my paper that still need work are the explanations and transitions in my methods and discussion section, however. Particularly, I still need to do a better job of conveying the statistical information and results analysis in a formal, yet more easily understandable manner. This can really only be done through a ton of edits, so I do have my work cut out for me. My grammar could also use a bit of work, because I tend to use passive quite a lot when writing.

With the presentation, I'm actually feeling pretty confident. Considering I've been working with my paper for a while I'm really confident that I can explain it well. I'm also much better at explaining concepts to people through words than in writing, so the presentation is something I'm actually looking forward too. In general, I've had a lot of practice explaining statistical concepts to others, and I'm confident that I can do so in the presentation. Not to say that the presentation is going to be easy, but it's something I'm going to have a lot of fun with. The only thing I'm worried about is the time limit. Considering that I love myself a bit too much, I tend to talk a lot. (734)

Feeling a bit conceited,
Akash

Valuing My Paper: Education for my Comparable Group

FINALLY

My full paper is in its really rough draft form, and I couldn't be any happier. After so many months of work and research, I've finally put together something that at this stage at least looks like a real research paper! Anyways, as I've hinted a lot of time already, my paper isn't even close to done, so this blog post is just a heads up for what I'm feeling really iffy and worried about.

The first thing that I'm worried about is the length of my entire paper. It's a bit like 1000 words over the limit and I need to cut as much as possible from it, with it still making sense. I know I have a tendency to be redundant and use a lot of complex language complex language, so pointing out anything that can be cut or that can be simplified will be very useful.

Another worry that I have in terms of my paper is the definitions that I provide. Because my paper is highly technical, I want to make sure than any person can read and understand it. Therefore, if I have any unclear definitions (I most probably will), or don't explain something well enough, please bring it up in my comments. Most of definitions are in the literature review, but I also deal with statistics in my results section that I somewhat avoid full explaining. Insight into whether I need to change this or expand on it would be really helpful.

In additions to my overwhelming definitions, I'm also worried about the data in my results section coming off as too much. I have a lot of tables in the section, and although they have explanations right beneath them, I'm wondering if I should discard some of the tables altogether. I would greatly appreciate if anyone has any insight into the specific tables I should keep, get rid of, or re-explain.

Finally, and I think this is another big concern of mine, are the transitions within my paper, particularly the results and discussion section. Transitions are incredibly important, especially in a technical paper like mine, and I want to ensure that everything I say flows smoothly from one topic to another. Therefore, commenting on any missing or bad transitions I have would be, again, incredibly helpful. I have a lot of complex concepts, and if I don't explain how they connect to one another well, I might as well not have written the paper in the first place.

Anyways, that's all I've got right now. (427)

Weirdly not tired,
Akash

Real Talk

AHHHHH!!!!

At the end of this week I'm going to have a whole research paper! It's really hard to believe how long I've come since my very first post, but I'm happy for this entire class and project. It's been a really good time. So without any further delay, I'm going to launch into my post.

The general structure of discussion sections for Finance papers doesn't vary much from the standard way that discussions are written.

As in Nissim and Liu's study on IPO valuation, discussions for results begin with an explanation of the pricing errors for the multiples (ie. why specific multiples preformed in specific ways). Often, as studies from researcher Ashwath Damodaran and Erik Lie suggest, these explanations are rooted in properties of the industry being analyzed, or the types comparable firms obtained within the results. Because methods are integral to the way the results within the study, discussion sections also talk about the way in which the methods were limited and how these limitations contributed to the results obtained within the study. In doing so, finance papers are able to connect their results, not only to a larger context of analysis available within literature reviews, but also to those in methods sections.
This connection allows the future directions sections of finance papers to be especially well-developed, connecting areas of the methods and literature review to suggest future directions in a specific industry or case-study.

I plan on incorporating all of these aspects into my own discussion section. Here's my plan:
First, after reiterating the purpose of my study, I'm going to discuss the implications of my results in the context of my initial question. Then, I'm going to expand the implications of my results to begin explaining why they were a certain way. Essentially, because the firms I picked were not only representative of Snapchat, but most other Social Media IPOs, the results of my study indicate that there is no optimally accurate comparable firm multiple for valuing Social Media IPOs.

To explain the results of my study I am going to include two "levels". The first includes an explanation for how conventional comparable firm multiples fail for Social Media IPOs, and the second is an explanation of how the method I used to pick comparable firms may have been flawed for the Social Media Industry in particular. From then, I'm going to transition into a discussion of the limitations of my paper. The very first limitation rests on one of my explanations: the method for choosing comparable firms. The method I for choosing comparable firms was used in a study on Biotechnology firms, which have a substantial amount of intangible assets (like research and development), similar to Social Media firms. It turns out however, that social media firms have such high investor sentiment and intangible assets that my application of the method was flawed. This was something I could only have seen after my research study, and it draws me to a discussion of future directions.

Ultimately, the method I used within the study is the only one that has ever been used in finance research. Therefore, another means of sorting and finding comparable firm groups would be an interesting avenue for future direction. I also present two or three other avenues for future directions based on other limitations and explanations I came across in my study.

Finally, I'm going to end my paper with a description of the implications of my future directions. This is relatively simple for me: it provides institutional and individual investors a better means for pricing the social media industry as well as other largely growth-oriented industries, which could be incredibly useful in the future with the shift towards more technology based companies carrying lower barriers to entry, more competition, and strong emphasis on growth.

Anywho, that's all I have right now. (645)

Tired As Always,
Akash