Principles of Finance, FIN20010

**Timbuk2**

I'm seriously worried about this exam.

What are people studying for this? The lecture notes are so disorganised, and like the lectures themselves, aren't in any sensible order or structure.

What do you reckon is coming up? Miller-Modigliani, Swaps, Adjusted Present Value (he's said both that this won't come up, and that it's very important), Forwards and Futures, Mergers, Rights issues, etc.?

Doug89

Oh Jimmy?

I did this module a few years ago. He's a total joke. Doesn't actually cover that much when you strip back all the crap he talks.

Try and categorise the questions and you should be grand, there's really not much to the course.

Jackmcg

yup! the last 4 months were all over the place, and the tutorials were useless.. i think the majority of the module are on the same boat though.
did you figure out what youre going to focus on?

**Timbuk2**

Jackmcg wrote: »

yup! the last 4 months were all over the place, and the tutorials were useless.. i think the majority of the module are on the same boat though.
did you figure out what youre going to focus on?

No I haven't figured out what to focus on now - Miller/Modigliani seems like a certainty, and Jimmy seemed to be hinting that the assignments we did (there were 3 - only the first two we had to hand up) would be good practice for the exam. But a lot of his hints were contradictory to what he had said the previous day, etc.

misslt

He's a nightmare, I only passed that subject thanks to his funky marking schemes.

Use the book, best advice I can give you - its quite long winded and waffly but the summaries aren't bad.

Read the theory, learn the formulae and you should be fine

Jackmcg

dont have the book But yeah ill be looking at valuation of shares, capital budgeting/ capital structure, and miller & modigliani between now and thursday!

Pandoras Twist

Gawd what an awful subject. If its any consolation I don't think he even looks at the exams when he grades them. I walked out thinking I hadnt even answered enough to pass let alone got what I wrote right and I got a B. Same went for our whole class.

Miller & Modigliani was big for us and swaps. Thats all I remember.

Worst subject I ever did. Utterly pointless.

Bluefox21

Pandoras Twist wrote: »

Gawd what an awful subject. If its any consolation I don't think he even looks at the exams when he grades them. I walked out thinking I hadnt even answered enough to pass let alone got what I wrote right and I got a B. Same went for our whole class.

Miller & Modigliani was big for us and swaps. Thats all I remember.

Worst subject I ever did. Utterly pointless.

The annoying thing is it's such an important subject. The principles of finance are relevant no matter what area you choose to go down. Really annoys me that it's run so poorly in UCD. It's not as if we need any more people being turned against Finance at the moment!

As someone said above learn the formulas. I managed to get an A and thought I did terrible.

Dannyg90

tbh honest everyone i know who's done that module has had hassle for the past 2 years people have sent emails to jimmy complaining about the exam cause its always bad, he ends up just passing most people if they've put any effort in it seems

spillit67

I got a B in that module and good **** I don't know how. I didn't know anything and I'm not lying here. Stopped going to his lectures because of how awful Jimmy was. I was set up in my mind that I was repeating.

The theory about Jimmy is that he throws the papers in the air and where it lands in his office is what grade you get.

**Timbuk2**

Thanks for the answers!

The thing is, this year he said due to the fact that he was out ill for 2 weeks, that he'd only be correcting one third of the exams, with the remaining 2 thirds being split between two PhD students. Not sure whether this is good or not, I imagine Jimmy would be more fair considering he knows exactly what we've done / haven't done in class!

Pandoras Twist

Bluefox21 wrote: »

The annoying thing is it's such an important subject. The principles of finance are relevant no matter what area you choose to go down. Really annoys me that it's run so poorly in UCD. It's not as if we need any more people being turned against Finance at the moment!

As someone said above learn the formulas. I managed to get an A and thought I did terrible.

It is quite annoying, but tbh if you go down the accounting/finance/business route you learn along the way. All the lectures ive done in finance in UCD since Jimmys class have all been really informative. Its Jimmy thats the issue

**Timbuk2**

Also, put-call parity - he's done it at least 5 times in class, it must be coming up! And he seemed to dedicate a whole lecture to adjusted present value at the end of term, hinting that it would be important! Put call parity isn't in the textbook but it isn't difficult, and if you've been attending lectures you probably have it written out about 17 times.

Rothmans

**Timbuk2** wrote: »

Also, put-call parity - he's done it at least 5 times in class, it must be coming up! And he seemed to dedicate a whole lecture to adjusted present value at the end of term, hinting that it would be important! Put call parity isn't in the textbook but it isn't difficult, and if you've been attending lectures you probably have it written out about 17 times.

Could ya tell us any other areas which he hinted at or emphasised.
It would be very much appreciated :):)

EDIT; I have just accepted that im fecked for this module, so any tips would go a long way

**Timbuk2**

Rothmans wrote: »

Could ya tell us any other areas which he hinted at or emphasised.
It would be very much appreciated :):)

EDIT; I have just accepted that im fecked for this module, so any tips would go a long way

It's a bit confusing as he seems to have hinted at everything at this stage:P but he did say that capital structures / Miller and Modigliani / valuation of shares would be relevant, and also he hinted that the 3 assignments we did (only two were for marking, one was 'optional') would be relevant.

But apparently he gave a similar type list last year and it turned out not to be true! He didn't really hint much at swaps but one of the tutors did (I don't think the tutors know anything about the exams, apparently it comes up quite often - you need to know vanilla swaps and currency swaps).

Jackmcg

im thinking i need a grind at this stage, heard great things about a guy called peter brady but i dont have a contact for him.. anyone know?

Pandoras Twist

I saw peter bradys grind notes. They were quite helpful for understanding finance. Pretty useless for jimmys exam though haha. That said, I did the paper in 2009 I think it was

Ignore his hints. He told us that he was doing a totally different paper because of the financial crisis and the fact that no body wanted to be accountants anymore *what total horse****e as 250 odd specialised in accounting), so it would be more theory based. Spent ages teaching us first principles stuff. Not one proof on the paper.

**Timbuk2**

Has anyone's tutor said anything about whether swaps are coming up? Apparently one of the tutors said they aren't, although I'm not sure how the tutors would know.

Also is binomial trees likely to come up? The temp guy covered them while Jimmy was sick but Jimmy himself didn't.

12 hours to go, oh dear...

Pandoras Twist

I'd go over swaps anyway. Theyre probably the easiest thing on the course. And jimmys a big fan

monaghanman10

doing some last minute cramming.iv covered miller and modigilian,NPV ARR IRR payback and bonds in detail so still have a bit to do.could be a long night

Eoghan41

**Timbuk2** wrote: »

No I haven't figured out what to focus on now - Miller/Modigliani seems like a certainty, and Jimmy seemed to be hinting that the assignments we did (there were 3 - only the first two we had to hand up) would be good practice for the exam. But a lot of his hints were contradictory to what he had said the previous day, etc.

"Discount rate proof wont come up".... prick

Eoghan41

Jimmy is by far the worst lecturer/teacher in the world..not even exaggerating I can't even begin to think of what someone worse than him would do during class...

Rothmans

well, regarless of what y'all and I myself think of Jimmy, I thought that was a right cunt of an exam. It was very tricky indeed. I went in thinking B might be possible, now I don't know if I even passed it. This will most likely reek havock on my GPA!

**Timbuk2**

Thought it was really tricky as well.

In fairness to the lecturer, his tips was fairly accurate, but the questions just had weird twists to them, plus we were given very strange pieces of info - like one question we were given a bunch of information for WACC, most of it was irrelevant - he must have just copied and pasted the question from somewhere, it didn't even have an (a) or (b), just a (c) and (d).

And as for the market value of the loan being £120%, I have no idea what that means, I took it was €1.20. Then the correction they made after about an hour confused me even more.

Out of our hands now, though.

Bluefox21

I know it's hard not to worry but we all felt the same way after our exam two years ago and he gave everyone A's and B's.

Take the above posters point that all the other Finance lecturers are actually quite good and don't be put off finance by Jimmy.

TimeToShine

disaster

Yuliyaucd

Did this subject with Jimmy 2 years ago,

I thought I would fail it, I attended every lecture and I did not understand a bit.

In Week 6, I found a grind, who helped me to put it all in my head for the exam.

Got an A- at the end.

And yes, its true what was written in the previous post, that Jimmy gave everyone A's and B's.

Believe me, Advanced Corporate Finance is a REAL nightmare!!!

Zephyr91

I don't do this module or anything like it but read this thread anyway. And this is what I've got from it: it's boring, taught poorly, tricky enough, bitch of a lecturer, you won't understand anything, and the exam is tough...but despite all this, you'll get an A or a B anyway, no matter how terrible you do...I like the sound of this!

Yuugib

Ah, it would have been great if Jimmy was correcting papers this year. As he is not feeling well, he will only be correcting maybe like 1/3 of the papers.

That is very worrying.