what's up everyone it's kenji here and in this video i thought i'd share some of the resources
that i found most useful when i was recruiting for investment banking so i basically split it up into
four main areas the first one has to do with free resources that are directly related to investment
banking the second one are free resources that are more say general knowledge knowledge or business
related stuff but i still think are beneficial then thirdly we'll look at some of the four pay
investment banking resources and lastly some for pay resources that are more general knowledge
so i'll leave them all in the description so you guys can take a quick look at those so here we go
all right so starting off with some free investment banking resources one that i found
very useful was a guide by vanderbilt university which is a very good school by the way and anyways
they had an investment banking guide and in it it's around 30 pages long and they cover all
essential information that you might need for recruiting right so things like definitions of
what an investment monk is what departments there are what skills you should have other things like
that and then it goes into more recruiting related stuff like what might be some interview steps
unfortunately it doesn't quite cover the interviews itself which is a bit of a shame
but i've made a video on that if you want to check it out i'll leave it somewhere up here about my
higher views and how that was like the second one is mergers and inquisitions which is basically a
website for investment banking and they got all sorts of things like resume templates to interview
questions so let's just take a closer look at one of the interview questions together so you can see
how detailed it is so here basically there's a table of contents and as you can see it's nicely
broken down into the types of questions out there so if we click on finance interview questions see
they actually provide the question with a detailed answer which is really appreciated
some other useful resources that are similar website kind of content are wall street oasis
which is basically like a forum for people that are keen on investor monkey and then another
one is investopedia you've probably heard of investopedia already but they do offer
good definitions of things like what a dcf is what beta means what alpha means which are all sort of
finance terms that nobody really explains to you right and a third free research that i thought i'd
share has to do with a youtuber actually i don't know this person myself but i thought it was very
useful his name is absal hussein and basically if you haven't seen his videos you probably have but
if not he basically has everything that's related to recruiting especially for finance related roles
he also worked at goldman sachs for a while so obviously he knows what he's talking about
i think it's very good i used it myself so yeah feel free to check that channel out all right so
moving on with some more free resources but this time around more general slash business finance
oriented stuff which i thought was quite useful it's not directly related to investment banking
but i think it was still quite beneficial on the whole to have a like better macro understanding
of things so the first one is actually a youtube video by bill akman if you don't
know who bilakman is he's a billionaire hedge fund manager and he basically breaks down everything
that relates to finance and investing in just under one hour so overall i think the video is
great for understanding financial accounting and corporate finance which are basically the core of
investment banking if you understand those two things well you're gonna be good at investment
banking or the job itself now obviously it's just one hour long it's a youtube video after all
but nonetheless i think it was a really useful resource continuing with videos another very
useful youtube video i found was by ray dalio who's another hedge fund manager he founded
bridgewater associates which is now one of the biggest hedge funds in the world and basically
he talks about all things about the economy and how he understands it as well as how he's made
his money through it right so it's titled how the economic machine works and in it he narrates it
and he has some animations to help with it so i thought it was really really handy i felt like it
was a lot easier to learn than through a textbook and at the same time it was a lot more fun right
and he talks about all things from debt cycles to economic crisis recessions other things like
that and yeah i'm not just saying it's good myself i mean it does have 20 million views
so i imagine it's not fairly well and if you're more into reading stuff he does have a full-on
270 page paper on really the same topic but it's obviously in a lot more detail i did print it out
a couple years ago and i did take some notes on it i thought it was really valuable to understand
that cycles inflations where sessions happen why some countries do well some others don't and other
things along those lines now i realize most of you aren't that bothered to read the whole thing but
nonetheless i'll just leave it out there in the description in case someone's actually interested
all right so we're done with the free section and now moving on to some for pay
investment banking resources so the first one is a book actually it's a book that i bought myself
it's called the investment banking valuation leveraged buyouts and mergers and acquisitions
i don't think it really matters which edition you buy but basically it's two senior bankers
i think one of them worked at ubs i can't remember where the other worked and basically they just got
together and made this book on investment banking right and i thought this was the most useful
investment banking resource that i found and that said it doesn't really talk about recruiting
rather it's more focused on what the job is like how to actually value a company how to go about
doing the excel work the powerpoint and so on and so forth yeah so it doesn't really go over the
interviews of how to get the job itself but rather it's more related to the content right obviously
if you do master the content odds are if you get an interview you're gonna be able to do well in it
right so at the same time it's it's sort of um yeah directly related if you will depending on
which edition you buy you do get a powerpoint and excel files with investment banking valuations so
here's the powerpoint with the instructions and then you get two excel files one that's
just a template and one that's complete with the different types of valuation methods there are
as well as some leverage buyouts and other things like that and as you can see inside the book here
it's super detailed it goes through all the steps you need to value your company using all
the different methods so it's definitely not it's definitely not a book that you read on the couch
but rather than something that you're in front of your desk and you're having to take notes on it
right another resource that i bought was on udemy which was actually just an online course i think
it cost around 12 because it was discounted at the time and it gave me a very good understanding of
investment marking all the way from the different divisions within an investment bank to types of
market players there are and how to use excel right so it was really quite comprehensive
unfortunately it didn't quite cover the recruiting aspect which was something that i thought was
missing but nonetheless i think it was quite useful and the fact that it didn't really have
much of the recruiting stuff is what prompted me to start my own course which i'll leave in the
description in short the course goes through every single step in the application process for banking
it's basically the course that i wish i had when i was going through the process myself it goes from
the different divisions of an investment bank what majors and courses you should take in university
the types of work experience you should aim for before banking all the way to preparing for the
interviews where i walk you through all types of questions you might get and how you should go
about answering them i also include interviews with some of my colleagues that have worked in
investment banking so you can get a different insight into how they went about getting their
jobs and lastly i provide some viable alternatives in case you're not able to break into investment
banking throughout i also provide downloadable resources like free templates formulas and more
so feel free to check that out if you're interested or if you just want to support this
youtube channel i will say though that there's some other 4k resources like uh financial modeling
bootcamps and other things along those lines but to be honest i didn't take them myself so i don't
really feel comfortable recommending them to you guys right maybe they're good maybe they're not
honestly i just can't say right i have to say that out of the people that i met say working
at goldman sachs i didn't really meet too many that had done any of these boot camps maybe they
just weren't open to saying that they did them but that's just been my experience i personally
thought they were just rather expensive at around two hundred dollars so i never got them but feel
free to check them out on your own and do your research if you think they're right for you all
right so moving on to the last section which is just general resources for pay and the first one
i'd recommend is a magazine called the economist you've probably already heard of it to be honest
but basically i used to read read it every week i still do if i'm honest and i think it's a great
resource basically it goes over all of the things that have to do with the business world it covers
politics business finance so it's basically the whole package and if you're hungry for knowledge
it's definitely right for you i will say though that it's not like most magazines where there's
more pictures than writing here is definitely the opposite as you can see more writing than
pictures so yeah keep that in mind so you're probably wondering kanji why is this relevant to
investment banking why should i care about what's happening in politics see and the reality is that
when you get to an interview with an investment monk odds are they're going to ask you about some
new stuff so for instance they might say hey can you tell me about some recent financial news that
you you've read related to the financial markets and obviously if you're on instagram all the time
you're not gonna know right and that's when something like the economist can come handy
where you'll be able to talk about some things and odds are maybe they've read the economist too and
if you name drop say i was reading i was reading the economist last week or something like that
they're gonna realize that well you're probably well-versed in your literary when it comes to
financial related topics right the second resource which is actually quite similar to
the economist is the financial times slash the wall street journal so both finance newspapers
i guess you probably already know them but anyways the financial times is typically more
for people that are outside of the us whilst the wall street journal is more u.s focused
um so when i was in wall street most people just read the wall street journal
um in europe where i am now people read the financial times more often right they're both
for paid they're rather expensive not gonna lie but if you're still in university odds are you
can get a discount a student discount through your university or maybe independently as well so yeah
those are the resources that i found most useful when i was recruiting for investment banking
if you feel like you have some resources that i didn't quite share then feel free to put them
in the comments you know at the end of the day if it helps everyone out then that's obviously good
i'll try to pin that and put that on top of the comments list so that everyone can enjoy it right
so that's all for this video i hope you enjoyed it and i'll hopefully catch you in the next one