The First Week!

First up, I have a shameless plug for Josh Calder’s blog. He just released his break through film clip on Sunday and has written up a detailed post about it's production and inspiration HERE. It’s worth a read and you can also follow his progress on the short movie that he has in the works. I’ve embedded a copy of the music video he directed for his talented brother below.



A second quick plug goes to Will Hawker who just came second in an innovation competition (against a myriad of other great submissions from all faculties) for one of his whiz-bang ideas. I was fortunate enough to attend the award ceremony and that was great. It was held on a 7th floor balcony/function area with an amazing view of the university that we never get to normally visit.

Now back to business. Because the first week of university is over I figured it would be a good time to write a detailed blog post. I have been intending to write a post the last couple of days but to be honest I've been a little time starved with all the readings that I've been set (and actually did!).

Regarding the content of each course, I won't bother going into too much depth but there are a few aspects that I thought were worth sharing. Firstly, the balance sheet analysis course is structured amazingly. Instead of going home after each lecture to do set problems that will teach you certain skills you have to apply what you learn to an ongoing assignment. In this case the assignment is the analysis of a midsized company. Each lecture you are taught an analysis type (strategic analysis, ratio analysis etc) and you need to apply what you learn each week. The company analysis makes up 70% of your total mark (60% written, 10% oral) and really nails in the practical aspect of what you are learning.

The other subject that I found great was one titled financial risk management. In this subject the second half of the semester is playing the 'trading game' in which you manage a portfolio of debt and write reports on your decisions. This simulates working in a treasury or central bank and teaches you about all the debt options that exist for funding projects. Again this really appeals to me as it has such a practical aspect to it.

Lastly, in regards to university, I finally managed to attend a library tour and information session. My dad had been trying to get me to do this ever since my undergrad and it turns out it is actually worth it. By being a student at the university I have access to nearly every newspaper in the world for free online (even via my home log in) as well as copies of every Australian news paper delivered daily in paper form (including the financial review that I pay for currently) and all the finance/economics magazines that I buy here and there. Long story short, the library is great and I can see why all the librarians always seem so excited when they talk about it!

Briefly I wanted to just list a few developments in my extracurricular activities over the past week. Firstly, this week I was elected into the executive committee for my toast masters club. I’ve been a member of this club for about 4 months and I’ve found it useful for working on my presentation skills (something that I currently see as my biggest weakness). Secondly, I have finished an article on technical analysis of charts. I’ve been working with a website (I’ll post a link once it is published) to produce a series of articles to educate finance students. Thirdly, my Spanish is coming along nicely. I am attempting to keep to 3 hours per week and this should get me to level 5 by the middle of next year. Fourthly, I have been looking into incorporating an exchange program into my degree and it turns out that UQ can place students into the 5th best business school in the world (top in continental Europe). I will be trying hard to work this into my degree when it comes time. Lastly, I managed to get information on a number of clubs from UQ and I’m going head first into experiencing this side of the university. On Saturday I have a post graduate networking barbeque and the UQ mountaineering society introduction climbing day on Sunday.

All in all this has been a hectic and productive week. If I can keep every week going at this pace then the progress is going to be very solid!

Warren Buffet Interview

This is a great interview with a man who is not only the third richest man (net worth of ~$50 billion) but is also one of the smartest and generous people on the planet.

It's a fairly long video but the first 10 minutes is definitely worth watching (all of it if you have the time). He touches on the US economy, unemployment rates and whether the government is acting appropriately.

I'll write more about him in a later post but for the time being it's worth hearing his views and placing them above all the sensationalist headlines.

New Phone + Updates

Got my brand new HTC Desire S today and it's amazing. Totally trumps my Iphone 3gs with all its customisation and features. It is going to take me a few days to sort out all the applications but I've got it in good working order. I've snapped a photo of the box below:

 

The highlights for me so far are:

• Voice Commands. Google has outdone its self with these. I can say 'Email "contact name" Hi mate how's it going? Want to meet up tomorrow?' and it will draft an email with what I have said to contact i specify. This is incredibly accurate but you have to pronounce your words clearly (good practice for me regardless). Other commands include 'text "contact"', 'Navigate to "address"', 'Search "terms"', 'call "contact" mobile/home', 'Map of restaurants in "area"', and 'note to self "note"'. 
• Instant photo upload with Google+. All my photos are automatically updated to my account where I can share them online. It also integrates with Facebook and most other photo services. 
• Google translate app. This is the most amazing translating app I have ever used. It utilises the voice to text features from the voice commands to translate what you want to say into 1 of 50 languages. It also uses its text to speech feature to read it back to you so that you can pronounce it correctly. As I am currently learning Spanish I have tested this in both directions. It was able to understand my Spanish sentences and translate it to English as well as translate English phrases into Spanish is great accuracy. Keep in mind I am only saying simple Spanish sentences with an Australian accent so it would be interesting to see how it works for a native speaker.   
• Google Apps and Widgets. Because Android is a Google OS it has, as you would expect, all of the amazing Google applications. I run the bulk of my online activities through Google currently and this makes it very convenient for me. It has my share portfolio on the Google finance app, my emails on the Gmail app, my Google calender effortlessly synced to the Android calender and my RSS feeds linked to the Google reader app.

Needless to say my day has been spent pretty much fiddling with my new tech. I did manage to get one week ahead on my economics subject (completed all readings and activities). I have decided to keep that pattern going and complete all the textbook readings for next weeks lectures in the next few days. This will mean I am familiar with the content during the lecture and I can ask more detailed questions if necessary. 

The plan for the next couple of days is to get some Spanish practice done, complete the article I'm writing on technical analysis, do the readings for my first week of university and restart my gymnastic workouts after 2 weeks off due to the flu.

Extra note: I have added a email subscription box onto the front page. This will send you an email update whenever I make a next post rather then having to check manually. Sign up! Also this will only spend you 1 email for the 24 hour period IF there is a post. This means that even if I update 2 or 3 times in one day (not likely) you won't get spammed with emails like Facebook loves to do. 

Higher Education

I recently re-watched Good Will Hunting (one of my favorite films) and there is a great scene where Will Hunting is arguing with a Harvard student. The student is trying to catch out Will's friend when he is pretending that he attends college there by asking him his thoughts on certain economic principles. Will then proceeds to point out that every bit of information the student has quoted is directly out of a textbook and asks if he has any original thoughts of his own or whether he just enjoys going to bars to regurgitate information and pass it off as his own. He then says this great quote "See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a fucking education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library".

This pops into my head today as I have just received my course profiles for all my subjects. For one of the subjects, in the learning activities section, it lists all the topics covered and the relevant textbook readings. I've included a copy of it below:

Topic 1: Introduction to Economics. Reading: Chapter 1

Topic 2: The Market System - Demand and Supply. Reading: Chapter 2

Topic 3: Elasticity, Taxes and Price Demands. Reading: Chapter 3

Topic 4: Costs of Production. Reading: Chapter 4

Topic 5: Profit Maximisation. Reading: Chapter 5

Topic 6: Market Structures. Reading: Chapter 6 & 7

...

Topic 12: Globalisation and International Trade. Reading: Chapter 15

Now I'm aware that most university courses are modeled from textbooks but this is the first time I've ever had a course that was literally just reading a textbook from start to finish. This really just slams in the point that the majority of what can be learnt (for a commerce degree anyway) from university could be got with just a library card and some focus. Also what this means is that the $3,000 course fee is simply just buying a certificate of proof that you have read the entire book... and that seems a little expensive.

Carbon Tax Interview

I was linked this 20 minute late line interview of Paul Keating regarding his thoughts on the carbon tax reform. This has got to be the best explanation for the carbon tax I have heard. He lays it out in simple economic terms about how it will effect the flow of capital into different areas of the economy and why it is an important reform to have in place.

The theory is that having the carbon tax in place will effect future investment decisions and bring about new enterprise that can exploit green technology opportunities. He likens this to the floating of the Australian dollar and how it brought about business in international tourism, Education services (full fee international students) and exports (he mentions wine and technology). This is the solid economic explanations I like to hear and read about when analysing the pro's and con's of a policy.

The amazing thing about this video is that in the 10 minutes he speaks about carbon tax he has explained it better then our current Labor government has since it was announced. Whether this is a sign of a great politician or a testament to the quality of our current ones (on both sides) is up for debate. Personally I think it is a bit of both.

First Post!

After deciding to move out of accounting and into finance I have re enrolled at university. I will be commencing a Masters of Commerce Advanced majoring in Applied Finance. This is a 2 year degree that incorporates a research component as well as all the courses offered in the honours year of a Bachelor of Commerce. Completing this degree will allow me to apply for a number of graduate jobs in a financial capital and will be a big step in my career.

Next week is orientation week. This pretty much gives me time to catch up on all the assumed knowledge for each of my courses. In addition to this I will be attending approximately 7 hours of skills workshops with a focus on writing and presentation skills. All in all this will be quite a busy week as I get everything in line to begin classes on the 25th.

The classes I have enrolled into for this semesters are:

Financial Statement Analysis

Corporate Finance

Economics for Commerce

Financial Risk Management

These courses are 4/6 of the prime courses in the applied finance major. I expect the work load to be very large despite only having 3 contact hours per subject (5 for corporate finance). It is my intention to complete this semester with a high distinction average. This is important as it will have a large effect on all my internship applications as well as give me access to the research subjects later in my degree.

I am also taking a number of steps outside of university to help my career prospects. I will be detailing these over the next couple of weeks in posts. Stay tuned...