Hey Everyone!
We only have one week left of school!!!! I'm definitely looking forward to the freedom I'll finally have, and I'm really excited to get into the meat of my research. On the other hand, I'm also somewhat nervous for what the future has to hold. After this week, the next time I'm going to be in school is in college, and that's a really scary thought.
Anyways, since last week, I've caught up with a good deal of the data collection I outlined within my schedule. I've recorded the total assets and EBITDA values for Facebook, LinkedIn, Tencent Holdings, Yelp, and Twitter, and then began recording the same values for all firms in their industries. The main problem I had this week was finding that LinkedIn's data was no longer on the NASDAQ site. This is because, in December of 2016, it was acquired by Microsoft. I was able to find a quick solution this problem, however, as Google keeps historical data from companies trading on large exchanges like NASDAQ or the NYSE. Therefore, my project is still on track. Last week I mentioned that I would have to collect data for analyze over 1000 firms in order to obtain a proper comparable firm sample for the 5 firms I listed above. I'm happy to say I no longer have to do that anymore, thanks to a filtering method I'm taking. NASDAQ has companies ranked based on their market capitalization. By filtering based on this metric, I am essentially looking only at companies that have similar levels of market capitalization to one another, and therefore, have similar size and total assets. This allows me to collect data for far fewer firms than I had initially needed to. For the rest of the week, I anticipate finishing my data collection phase and moving on to finding comparable firms for each of the companies that I picked out. From there, I will perform my analyses on each of the comparable firm multiples that I chose for my study.
Other than this, I've been working to clean up my methods and literature reviews for the end of the trimester. My methods assignment definitely needs more explanation, and I need to articulate complex statistical calculations in ways that everyone can understand easily. Specifically, my biggest problem is making sure my derivation for the harmonic mean projection of a multiple is simple and easy to understand.
That's all for now! Stay tuned next time for musings on calculations! (413)
Akash
We only have one week left of school!!!! I'm definitely looking forward to the freedom I'll finally have, and I'm really excited to get into the meat of my research. On the other hand, I'm also somewhat nervous for what the future has to hold. After this week, the next time I'm going to be in school is in college, and that's a really scary thought.
Anyways, since last week, I've caught up with a good deal of the data collection I outlined within my schedule. I've recorded the total assets and EBITDA values for Facebook, LinkedIn, Tencent Holdings, Yelp, and Twitter, and then began recording the same values for all firms in their industries. The main problem I had this week was finding that LinkedIn's data was no longer on the NASDAQ site. This is because, in December of 2016, it was acquired by Microsoft. I was able to find a quick solution this problem, however, as Google keeps historical data from companies trading on large exchanges like NASDAQ or the NYSE. Therefore, my project is still on track. Last week I mentioned that I would have to collect data for analyze over 1000 firms in order to obtain a proper comparable firm sample for the 5 firms I listed above. I'm happy to say I no longer have to do that anymore, thanks to a filtering method I'm taking. NASDAQ has companies ranked based on their market capitalization. By filtering based on this metric, I am essentially looking only at companies that have similar levels of market capitalization to one another, and therefore, have similar size and total assets. This allows me to collect data for far fewer firms than I had initially needed to. For the rest of the week, I anticipate finishing my data collection phase and moving on to finding comparable firms for each of the companies that I picked out. From there, I will perform my analyses on each of the comparable firm multiples that I chose for my study.
Other than this, I've been working to clean up my methods and literature reviews for the end of the trimester. My methods assignment definitely needs more explanation, and I need to articulate complex statistical calculations in ways that everyone can understand easily. Specifically, my biggest problem is making sure my derivation for the harmonic mean projection of a multiple is simple and easy to understand.
That's all for now! Stay tuned next time for musings on calculations! (413)
Akash
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ReplyDeleteAkash,
ReplyDeleteYou seem to have a much clearer direction for your research than you did last week and a much better and more manageable schedule. It's great that you were able to use filtering on the data to cut some of the workload on your end. It sounds like you are making great headway on the actual research. In terms of the methods section, i agree that you need to explain your statistical methods more in depth. This will make the methods clearer and lend to your credibility in the field. Keep up the great work. I am so excited to see what you come up with, especially since it is so relevant as Snapchat is currently working on their IPO.
Hey Bud!
ReplyDeleteYou seem really confident as you're writing this and I'm so happy that you feel excited and secure in your research. I'm also really glad that you found a way around the hiccup of the data not being available to you through the same medium that you had begun with. Good job picking right back up. It sounds like your really pressing forward and being active in your initial categorization of companies and collection of data. That's reassuring because, even though you'll finally enjoy the freedom we have on Thursday, no one has to worry if you're going to do your work and stay on track. It's also great that you recognize that making your paper accessible and readable is going to be a challenge. Making it easy to read is really going to be the key at this point since I think everything else (naturally, because you're you) is going to go smoothly.
Good luck!
Akash, how are you in terms of abiding to your schedule? Were you planning on still collecting data into February? Please fill me in on this, as I want to make sure you've given yourself adequate time to do the rest of your project. Also, if I remember correctly (which I oftentimes do not), you were learning "R" for your project. When are you going to begin doing this? Have you already started? It FEELS like you're a bit behind, so I just want to make sure it's all achievable.
ReplyDelete