Excel skills for summer internship (S&T)

I was wondering what level of MS Excel skills are necessary when beginning a summer internship. I haven't used excel that much so I was wondering what level I need to get to before the summer. Advice from someone who has been through an intenship would be much appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

n.b. I am looking to focus my rotations on sales desks, if that makes much difference compared to trading.

Reply 1

Eklipz89

I was wondering exactly the same thing. Any websites for excel tutorial would be great.

Reply 2

Pretence

Original post by scrumhalf986

u dont need 2 know excel for sales.

Reply 3

bluenose53

Not saying you need it, but there are quite a few VBA tutorials in youtube including this channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/VBA4Excel#p/u

Reply 4

Billy_Van_Barzini

Anything more than the basics is not worth learning at this stage, just concentrate on your exams.

If you do get given projects, it's easier to learn the specific stuff that you need as you go along. I interned on a derivatives trading desk without knowing any VBA at the start, and was fine picking it up along the way. A lot of what I was doing involved extracting data from datasources (Bloomberg, Reuters) which you can't really learn beforehand unless your uni has terminals and you have time. I also ended up learning a programming language that is specific for my firm in order to access the internal framework, and I'd imagine each firm has it's own variation. Again, you can't prepare for this beforehand.

Simply put, unless you're on the Quant desks, you don't really need to know anything more than the basics when you start. You should however be able to pick stuff up quickly, and what exactly you need to learn will depend on what projects your desk has in mind.

Edit: If you must, use this. It's what was floating around the desk : http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-modelling-finance-using-Excel/dp/0471499226/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298758936&sr=8-1

(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 5

MRman1988

Hey,
Yeah I was wondering exactly the same stuff as above. If people here don't think its too necessary to know lots of Excel going into an internship (mine is also in sales), is there anything in terms of preparation that you would recommend? Anything that might help a bit? Hull's derivative book or anything??
Cheers

Reply 6

ubsintern

Original post by MRman1988

Ditto!!

Reply 7

scrumhalf986

thanks very much to everyone for your input, it's much appreciated.

with regard to background reading, a friend of mine has a place at barcap and he was reccommended "Options, Futures and other Derivatives" by John C. Hull. I'm working through it now and its a decent book and easy enough to get stuck into.