The WSP Blog | Articles and lessons by the Wall Street Prep team

Explain the yield curve to me like I'm an idiot

On December 3, 2018, parts of the yield curve inverted for the first time in a decade. Specifically, the difference (“yield spread”) between 3-year and 5-year treasuries went negative. Take a look: That’s troubling, because if inverted yield curves from the ... Read More

Finance Careers Infographic: Who's Who in Corporate Finance

So you want to break into a career in finance? Buy side or sell side? M&A or private equity? Here we've put together an infographic showing all of corporate finance's major players and how they interact with one another. A ... Read More

Guide to FP&A: Job Description and Responsibilities

Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) is a group within a company’s finance organization that provides senior management with a forecast of the company’s profit and loss (income statement) and operating performance for the upcoming quarter and year. These forecasts inform management on the progress ... Read More

FP&A Career Path and Salary Guide: Analyst to Director

The FP&A career path starts at the analyst level and progresses to director of FP&A: FP&A Analyst Senior FP&A Analyst FP&A Manager Director/VP, FP&A The career path of FP&A professionals is less standard than that of investment bankers or consultants. However, ... Read More

DCF Model Training: 6 Steps to Building a DCF Model in Excel

A discounted cash flow model ("DCF model") is a type of financial model that values a company by forecasting its' cash flows and discounting the cash flows to arrive at a current, present value. The DCF has the distinction of being ... Read More

Accounting for Capitalized Software Costs

With the growth in the number and size of software companies, we think it's important to shed some light on capitalized software costs. Capitalized software costs are costs such as programmer compensation, software testing and other direct and indirect overhead costs that are capitalized on ... Read More

Stock Based Compensation Accounting: Journal Entries

Under US GAAP, stock based compensation (SBC) is recognized as a non-cash expense on the income statement. Specifically, SBC expense is an operating expense (just like wages) and is allocated to the relevant operating line items: SBC issued to direct labor ... Read More

Budget to Actual Variance Analysis in FP&A

A key function for the FP&A professional is to perform a budget to actual variance analysis. A budget to actual variance analysis is a process by which a company's budget is compared to actual results and the reasons for the variance ... Read More

Rolling Forecast Best Practices: A Guide for FP&A Professionals

A rolling forecast is a management tool that enables organizations to continuously plan (i.e. forecast) over a set time horizon. For example, if your company produces a plan for calendar year 2018, a rolling forecast will re-forecast the next twelve ... Read More

WACC (Weighted Average Cost of Capital): WACC Formula and Real Examples

The weighted average cost of capital (WACC) is one of the key inputs in discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis and is frequently the topic of technical investment banking interviews. The WACC is the rate at which a company’s future cash flows need ... Read More

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