The hottest Financial Modeling Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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The PULSE Framework: Start With the Vitals, Not the Narrative

Behavioral Value Investor • 200 implied HN points • 09 Mar 26
💰 Finance Financial Modeling
  1. Use the PULSE framework as a fast triage tool that pulls five financial "vitals" from all three statements so you can quickly sort stocks into not interesting, attractive-but-expensive, or attractive-at-a-good-price. This lets you focus deeper research only on the most promising ideas.
  2. Look first at Economic Profit over time and Underlying Free Cash Flow (adjusted for stock options and compared to net income) to see if a business truly earns above its cost of capital and converts profits into real cash. Consistent, rising economic profit and a healthy FCF-to-net-income ratio signal higher quality.
  3. Always check leverage and valuation together: use Net Debt/EBITDA to spot risky capital structures, a Smoothed FCF yield (multi-year average brought forward by expected growth) to assess sustainable valuation, and an EV cap rate (last 12 months plus debt) to avoid companies that only look cheap because of heavy debt. Combining these measures helps catch hidden risk and find genuinely attractive prices.

Best Buys February 2024

Compounding Quality • 1867 implied HN points • 04 Feb 24
💰 Finance Financial Modeling
  1. The post provides a list of favorite stocks for February 2024.
  2. Automatic Data Processing and Text SA are among the recommended stocks.
  3. The stocks are highlighted for their industry position, financial performance, undervaluation, and potential returns.

Excel Forever

Net Interest • 42 implied HN points • 06 Feb 26
💰 Finance Financial Modeling
  1. AI assistants can rapidly build serviceable financial models inside Excel by pulling public data and automating forecasts, showing how much routine analyst work can be automated.
  2. Excel remains the central workspace for finance because it’s a shared language that lets analysts inject judgment, so AI that integrates with Excel is more useful than tools that try to replace it.
  3. Advances in AI (bigger context windows and better reasoning) put pressure on legacy market-intelligence vendors and valuations, though complex cases and human judgment still matter.

Thinking in N not T

moontower: a stoner dad explains options trading to his kids • 314 implied HN points • 10 Jan 24
💰 Finance Financial Modeling
  1. When analyzing data, consider thinking in terms of the number of unique data points (N) rather than the total number of observations (T).
  2. Samples drawn from the same regime reduce the effective number of data points, impacting the reliability of quantitative analysis.
  3. Account for autocorrelation in data to avoid biases in estimating return volatilities and risk, ensuring better comparisons across different investments.

AI Pricing Strategy 101: How to Use ChatGPT, Claude & Perplexity for Pricing Research — AI-powered refresh of your successful pricing frameworks post

The Product Channel By Sid Saladi • 10 implied HN points • 01 Feb 26
💼 Business Financial Modeling
  1. Use each AI tool for its strength — Perplexity for fast market research, Claude for customer psychology and messaging, and ChatGPT for scenario math and modeling so your pricing work is faster and more accurate.
  2. Shift from effort-based to value-based pricing — charge for the customer impact and outcomes you deliver, not the hours you spent, and let AI help quantify and communicate that value.
  3. AI streamlines the pricing workflow by summarizing competitors, simulating tough customers, and running pricing scenarios, and you can automate much of this with ready-to-use prompts.
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The Claude Financial Modeling Workshop: Build Your First Money Dashboard in 10 Minutes

The Product Channel By Sid Saladi • 13 implied HN points • 11 Jan 26
💰 Finance Financial Modeling
  1. Use Claude to build interactive financial dashboards in minutes, like an emergency fund runway and a subscription audit, with sliders to test different expense and savings scenarios.
  2. Use the 4-part prompt formula—give full context, declare controllable variables (sliders), ask Claude to show its step-by-step logic, and request clear visualizations—to get accurate, usable models.
  3. Leverage the ready-made toolkit of 50 templates to create practical financial tools (lifestyle inflation detectors, debt payoff optimizers, retirement gap finders, etc.) so you can build useful models instead of just reading about them.

How do equity analysts write a report?

Klement on Investing • 6 implied HN points • 25 Nov 25
💰 Finance Financial Modeling
  1. Analysts focus on a few key drivers of company performance and change those priorities as the macro environment changes. For example, during inflation they paid more attention to supply-chain disruptions and rising costs.
  2. Valuation methods vary by region and shape what analysts look at: multiples (especially P/E) dominate in North America and Asia while DCFs are more common elsewhere, and multiples push analysts to stress customers, pricing and margins while DCFs push them to stress macro risk and investment activity.
  3. Relying on a single valuation method creates biased attention and mispricing — analysts using multiples tend to overreact to firm-level drivers and underreact to macro factors — so blending multiple valuation approaches gives a more balanced view and can reveal investment opportunities.

Financial Modeling for Startups

Strategic Finance Playbook • 19 implied HN points • 07 Mar 23
💰 Finance Financial Modeling
  1. Financial models are more than just tools for fundraising, they are essential decision-making guides for startups.
  2. A financial model translates your business into numbers, helping predict future outcomes and guide spending.
  3. Startups need a clear strategy before building a financial model to ensure alignment and adaptability.

Buying the Dip

reedmolbak • 2 HN points • 05 Mar 24
💰 Finance Financial Modeling
  1. Buying the dip strategy involves waiting for an asset price to drop below a specific threshold before purchasing it, but simulation data shows that this strategy is usually less effective than buying regularly.
  2. When dealing with volatile assets, buying the dip can be beneficial if the asset underperforms in the median case but significantly overperforms occasionally, providing exposure without heavy losses.
  3. For stable assets or normal investors, buying regularly is usually the best strategy as it requires less effort and is generally more effective than trying to time the market by waiting for price dips.

Quant Letter: November 2023, Week 4

The Parlour • 21 implied HN points • 29 Nov 23
💰 Finance Financial Modeling
  1. The paper introduces a methodology using Shapley values to understand the contribution of different factors in portfolio performance.
  2. It presents the versatile SPPC method for evaluating predictor group contributions to portfolio success.
  3. The SPPC method quantifies predictor impacts and offers insights into changing dynamics over time in financial machine learning.

Quant Letter: January 2025, Week-3

The Parlour • 4 implied HN points • 15 Jan 25
💰 Finance Financial Modeling
  1. A model for pricing VIX options has proven effective in markets like Germany's power and TTF gas markets. This model uses multiple factors to improve accuracy.
  2. The HJM and Lifted Heston Model aims to connect historical data of futures contracts with current implied volatility. This helps better predict market behaviors.
  3. Understanding these models can enhance strategies in quantitative finance, especially for those working with options and futures trading.

A Do-it-yourself (DIY) Valuation of Tesla: Of Investment Regrets and Disagreements!

Musings on Markets • 19 implied HN points • 07 Feb 20
💰 Finance Financial Modeling
  1. Value of Tesla can change based on different factors like growth, profitability, investment, and risk. Each of these areas can greatly influence how much the company might be worth in the future.
  2. Investors should research and make their own estimates for Tesla's future. It's important to look at company performance and market trends to form a realistic view.
  3. Disagreements about Tesla's value are normal and part of investing. Investors should stick to their own valuations and beliefs without getting swayed by market noise.

Quant Letter: December 2024, Week-1

The Parlour • 0 implied HN points • 04 Dec 24
💰 Finance Financial Modeling
  1. A new method for valuing private data is proposed, aiming to enhance current data market systems.
  2. The study introduces risk models using tree structures to better manage interconnected risks within a portfolio.
  3. These advancements could lead to improvements in how data is acquired and utilized in finance.

Following up on Groupon

Musings on Markets • 0 implied HN points • 04 Nov 11
💰 Finance Financial Modeling
  1. In investing, it's important to stay humble and be ready to rethink your assumptions. The market might have a different, more optimistic view of a company's growth.
  2. Discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis is not inherently biased against growth companies. It gives a true value based on projected cash flows, even if that feels conservative.
  3. Just because a stock has a high price doesn't mean it's worth that much. Many investors are focused on short-term gains and may buy stocks without understanding their true value.

Up, up and away! A crowd-valuation of Uber!

Musings on Markets • 0 implied HN points • 03 Dec 14
💼 Business Financial Modeling
  1. Valuation isn't just about the numbers; it's also about the story behind those numbers. Your personal views and biases will shape how you value a company like Uber.
  2. Different narratives can lead to vastly different valuations. If you see Uber as having a huge market potential, you might arrive at a value much higher than someone who sees it more conservatively.
  3. It's important to update your narrative as new information becomes available. Successful investors often get the narrative right, even if their number crunching isn’t perfect.