Why I Love Excel (And Why You Should Too) - Stocks and Spreadsheets

Excel is great...here's why.

DISCLAIMER:
This channel is for education purposes only and does not constitute financial advice - Richard is not responsible for investment actions taken by viewers. Please seek out a registered advisor if you require assistance (while Richard is a registered portfolio manager at WDS Investment Management, he does not provide advice through The Plain Bagel, which is not affiliated with his employer).

[cadekachelmeier]

Optimist: the glass is 1/2 full
Pessimist: the glass is 1/2 empty
Excel: the glass is January 2nd.

[triple_gem_shining]

Plain bagel : one of the only qualified finance YouTube channels

[fredericbrown]

06:30 Ironically, my arbitrary guideline at work (in IT) is that if I need to do VBA in Excel it might be time to consider switching to "actual" coding in an "actual" programming language. But to make a ludicrously overengineered dashboard with conditional formatting so I can keep an eye on tax-loss harvesting opportunities (or stuff like that such as keeping a portfolio balanced / rebalancing, etc.) Excel or another spreadsheet software is a great tool (I use Google Sheets for my personal finances).

[RichieJack]

Excel built my career. Nothing against my alma mater, but Excel did more for my career and improving my skills than going to college. And I had almost zero training That's part of the power of Excel, you can just start using it and pick things up almost naturally over time.

From there, Excel gave me a sound understanding of the basics of formulas and then I could use that logic and apply it to other programming like Qlik, Tableau and even to a degree, SQL.

And over the past 20 years I would hear company after company and expert after expert talking about the need to get away from Excel completely, yet here we are still with a need for Excel in every day tasks and reporting. Meanwhile it's has greatly improved its capabilities to the point where on some level it can do just about anything that any analyst or decision maker really needs.

[eddiecarrascojr]

As I've gotten to use excel more I'm glad other people also get excited about spreadsheets. Thanks Richard, you are the finance YouTuber we need.

[jakedunn]

It might be worth spending a bit of time learning Python, in particular using a library like Pandas in a Jupyter notebook (this is a very visual approach similar to Excel), it's a little more complex at first but it's much more powerful and less error prone. In Excel the computation logic is encoded in relationships across the cells which can make it very difficult to debug. In Python the computation logic is explicit. Importing data is also much easier.

[jacobprice]

Guy at my office has “I <3 spreadsheets” on his mug.

[lairr]

I hope you revist this topic again. Maybe with some recomendations on excel/google sheets books or courses.

I'm a construction worker and not an academic but over the last few years simply tracking my personal finances and working towards real goals has made all the difference for me.

[niku]

you might want to include 'Application.ScreenUpdating = False' at the start of your VBA code, just stops the screen jumping around. Feels a bit more seemless. Hope this helps!!!

[JumpinJew]

and it's not just for finance. I'm a pharmacy student and I use excel/sheets for patient charting all the time. It helps me list all of the current medications being taken by my patients and is even more useful for determining why some of my patients experience certain side effects. Makes my life so much easier

[JackDuffley]

The most disappointing part about excel is making a sick spreadsheet and not being able to share your excitement with anyone else about it 😞 lol

[javiermartinezrossi]

It really shows how much I trust you that I'm watching a video about excel

[stouf]

Myman richard starting off 2022 with a fire video!

[af]

The youtube algorithm is really tuned in to the type of freak I am. Love me a good spreadsheet video.

[bertob]

Please do more videos about excel and VBA. It interesting to learn how someone can use these mechanisms to enhance their analytical abilities. This is from someone trying to make the switch from field HR to business analysts. Love the content. Always a top tier lecturer.

[cdh]

Hilarious that you released this video today.. Just a few hours earlier I logged on to my mom's computer (we live in different countries) and helped her rebalance her portfolio, while talking to her on the phone.. first thing I did was open Excel and added her positions and some simple formulas to show simple percentage-changes would affect her positions. She was amazed by it, while for me it took maybe 30 seconds to type. (Eventually we did get rid of some older positions that were inherited from my grandpa and put that money into ETFs to better suit her risk profile and investment horizon).

[jhutt]

Have to comment that that dead pan picture of you heart Excel is excellent.

I love Excel too. It's pretty much the greatest thing invented for computers since 1990

[louiscornillie]

Happy new year Mr. Plain Bagel! Really love the videos <3

[toughmonkey]

I just started as an analyst and this is exactly what i needed. Please more of the excel, Bloomberg, capita IQ etc videos

[mooselinf]

That was gold! I never knew about the SEC page. If I could like twice - I would, just for that.