A very useful tool for the do-it-yourself investment analyst.

If this sounds like an advertisement it’s because it is. An advertisement of the good kind though in the sense that [a] I don’t get paid for it, and [b] I am a paid-up subscriber (but, for full disclosure, I’m not a shareholder).

finbox.io provides investing tools to all types of investors: individuals, financial advisors, asset managers or anyone who cares about analyzing a company and wants to determine its attractiveness or lack thereof. Their format is easy to understand and flexible to handle, and they provide several valuation models all in one location. Like all of these instruments, finbox.io does not necessarily assure you will become a better investor (wouldn’t you wish!) but it gives you all you need to at least work through scenarios and let you decide if you think they are reasonable.

Sometime ago I spoke on the phone with Matt Hogan, one of the co-founders, and learned more about the origins of their idea.

Prior to finbox.io, Andy Pai (another co-founder) and Matt worked for an investment banking group providing fairness opinions in connection to stock acquisitions. They spent much of their time building valuation models in Excel to help clients determine an asset’s intrinsic value. 

In their free time, they started to invest more actively in the stock market and used these same model templates to support their own decisions. While the models and analysis proved to be highly valuable, they found the process of continuously creating and updating Excel spreadsheets to be extremely tedious and time consuming; in their minds there had to be a better way. So they decided to build a simple web widget where you could effectively type in any stock ticker and a discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis would pop up on the web browser (with the ability to edit the underlying assumptions). They shared the widget with friends and colleagues who loved it and wanted to see more. The rest, as they say, is history.

I’ve been a user now for a couple of months and feel comfortable with the presentations, options and flexibility. In fact, I will go as far as to say that for a quick and complete overview of a listed company, nothing comes close to finbox.io. I think they still offer a free trial, but even if they don’t you can choose a monthly plan (setting you back $39) and if you don’t like it you have no further obligations.

Go ahead and let the inner analyst in you rip loose.

 

-Further Readings-
My Current Reads – a list of the last 30 items (books, articles or blog posts) I found interesting: right column on HOME page, or under LIBRARY > MY CURRENT READS.
Research – economics and finance research papers: under LIBRARY > RESEARCH.