Visual Basic as a Tool for Financial Modeling in Excel
 

My question: Is Visual Basic the most appropriate tool to use for completing
codes for Financial Models that I am learning to build in excel?

Visual Basic as a Tool for Financial Modeling in Excel
 

The question is not very specific. Does VB include VBA? Does said
building mean using cells and formulas without using VBA? What sort of
financial models? Do the models include intermediate calculations that
use a lot of cells? Are worksheet formulas being changed regularly to
improve the model? If the answer to either of the last two questions
is 'yes', it might be more efficient to use some VBA (or even VB).

Hth,
Merjet

Visual Basic as a Tool for Financial Modeling in Excel
 

On Jun 26, 8:08 am, Patrick A. Neely <Patrick A.
wrote:
My question: Is Visual Basic the most appropriate tool to use for completing
codes for Financial Models that I am learning to build in excel?

This depends on what you mean by Financial Model.

Excel is a powerful reporting language.

Excel has a large audience of developers that include business
analysts and non-programmers.

Excel is a meal-ticket programming language in that if you're
excellent at programming in it you'll be able to find a job and your
work will be appreciated.

That said.

If you are modeling pensions or variable annuities or pricing
insurance reserves it's not the tool for the job.

Each of these industries have custom software packages that vendors
sell - none of which (except perhaps a few by hobbiests) are
implemented in Excel.

Popular programming languages for advanced modeling include:

Standard languages such as C,C++,C#,Java, and VB.
Package languages such as S,SAS,APL, Mathematica

You'd see S and Mathematica in small brokerages where the investment
algorithms use advanced Mathematics (like BARRA but also Morgan
Stanley and many others) to guide their investments schemes.

You'd see SAS in places where the structure of the data is as
important as the data itself.

You'd see the standard languages in places where the original
development team developed in house code. Often in house code takes
advantage of special memory mapping or high performance data number
crunching.

You'd see APL in insurance companies where IBM left a legacy. APL is
well suited dealing with matrices which means it's perfectly suited to
modeling annuities, and computations involving mortality and
morbidity.

Visual Basic as a Tool for Financial Modeling in Excel
 

Thanks Merjet,
To clarify I am working with Visual Basic Editor through Microsoft Office
Excel 2003.
I would like to calculate market scenarios using an outside pricing
provider(Bloomberg). The models do involve intermediate calculations, not
too many cells. The worksheet formulas (macro's ideally) will remain
constant. The input data will only change.
Best,
Patrick A. Neely

"merjet" wrote:

The question is not very specific. Does VB include VBA? Does said
building mean using cells and formulas without using VBA? What sort of
financial models? Do the models include intermediate calculations that
use a lot of cells? Are worksheet formulas being changed regularly to
improve the model? If the answer to either of the last two questions
is 'yes', it might be more efficient to use some VBA (or even VB).

Hth,
Merjet

Visual Basic as a Tool for Financial Modeling in Excel
 

It seems people connect to their Bloomberg service using DDE. Check the
Excel Help for that term.
You can then have formulas that refer to this returned data.

Maybe your Bloomberg service rep can help ?

NickHK

"Patrick A. Neely" wrote in
message ...
Thanks Merjet,
To clarify I am working with Visual Basic Editor through Microsoft Office
Excel 2003.
I would like to calculate market scenarios using an outside pricing
provider(Bloomberg). The models do involve intermediate calculations,
not
too many cells. The worksheet formulas (macro's ideally) will remain
constant. The input data will only change.
Best,
Patrick A. Neely

"merjet" wrote:

The question is not very specific. Does VB include VBA? Does said
building mean using cells and formulas without using VBA? What sort of
financial models? Do the models include intermediate calculations that
use a lot of cells? Are worksheet formulas being changed regularly to
improve the model? If the answer to either of the last two questions
is 'yes', it might be more efficient to use some VBA (or even VB).

Hth,
Merjet