Shortly before this website was created, I had convinced two dear friends to set up their own blogs. “What are we going to write about?” They asked. I suggested the following exercise: choose a topic and see how many ideas for posts you can come up with in 15 minutes. If you cannot produce more than a handful ideas, then perhaps you should focus on a different subject.
And then, just for fun, I grabbed pencil and paper and tried the exercise myself.
The number was 29. Twenty nine potential posts in fifteen minutes. And so it began. Here’s the original list, followed by posts I continue to add to it.
Original List (Tuesday January 9, 2018, 8:35 PM)
- Essential elements of a great investment policy (what is essential? what is excessive? what is not advisable?)
- How to create an efficient portfolio using Excel?
- What questions should you ask before adding a new asset class to your portfolio?
- How often should you hire/fire asset managers?
- What do you need to set up in-house investing?
- In-house investing vs. outside managers – what is best?
- How many external asset managers is too many?
- Essentials accounting concepts for FX
- Essential accounting concepts for swaps
- How to get your head around cross currency swaps? (think of swaps as pairs of bonds)
- ASRs vs. open market vs. tender offers
- How often should you rotate brokers (share repurchases)?
- What is VWAP and how is it calculated?
- Why do brokers claim they can beat VWAP?
- Should you enter into swaps to floating?
- What is the optimal fixed-floating mix?
- What is ALM and how does it apply to the treasury world?
- What factors should I consider to set my dividend policy?
- What is WACC and why is it important?
- How often should I talk to my rating agencies?
- What is a forward starting swap? When does it make sense to use it?
- Issuing debt in the U.S., a step-by-step manual
- What is tax integration and why is it important?
- Do share repurchases add value? Shall they increase your share price?
- Managing external asset managers. What is important?
- What questions you should ask during an RFP of asset managers?
- What is counterparty risk and why is it important?
- Framework to evaluate counterparty risk
- Difference between return and yield
New Additions
- How to construct an efficient frontier using Excel
- Step-by-step stress test analysis in Excel
- Tax reform and cash repatriation: what happens when the offshore cash “comes back” to the U.S.?
- Fundamental concepts: term premium
- First principles: no arbitrage theory
- First principles: risk-return relationship
If you have any suggestions to add to the list, please send me a message at luis@7fin.org. Domo arigato.