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The Brode Report | Aug 2018 Great Colors in Graphs
Well, summer is rapidly drawing to a close here. It was a good one and I spent lots of time outside and with family. Aside from extensive ramblings in Boulder’s flatirons and the canyon, I was also in Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks (wow!) and had trips to both Detroit and Cleveland. But Boulder schools have started up, so even though it’s still August it’s starting to feel a bit like fall.
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Special request: Zach needs his first real job!
So Zach (now 23) has finished his Masters in Economics and is looking for a job. He’s interested in economic research, and places like economic consulting firms, larger banks, think tanks, and hedge funds are decent prospects. To clarify, let me talk about what he’s NOT looking for: doing financial analysis, like entry-level B.A. business major work. He wants to be more rigorous in his analytics and still make use of the heavy statistical knowledge he picked up in grad school He’s open to all geographies, so if you have connections or opportunities that he should know about, please let me know. Thanks a million! |
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Need to get debt or equity capital?
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Great Colors in Charts I’ve talked about charts before in this newsletter. We have seen misleading charts as well as bad charts and insights from better ones. Now I want to talk about colors in charts. I don’t pick colors. I find it paralyzing. How do I choose among 10,000 different paints? I defer to Eleanor for colors now; when I was single I hired a designer to be a color dominatrix of sorts because I couldn’t pick colors for the whole house. I frequently produce graphs in my work, and Excel will pick colors for me all day long, but the defaults often don’t look good. So how am I to improve a chart like this one below? It’s not straight-out awful, it’s just a bit garish and it distracts from everything else on the page.
The results: Ah, that’s better. Just a bit more muted, but still easy enough to tell apart. Certainly reasonable people can differ on aesthetics, but these sites let me make charts that I appreciate. In any case, I hope you enjoy these tools and that together we can rid the world of ugly charts. |
Simple Financial Statements Tutorial This week Ollie (13, and a budding entrepreneur) made a statement that conflated ideas about income statements, balance sheets, and cap tables. I thought he needed a basic tutorial in management accounting, and I found an excellent piece from the SEC called “Beginners’ Guide to Financial Statement.” It’s well-written and succinct. The first 3 ½ pages tell you all you need to know. It’s encouraging: “If you can read a nutrition label or a baseball box score, you can learn to read basic financial statements. If you can follow a recipe or apply for a loan, you can learn basic accounting.” Highly recommended. |
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The Brode Group |
Strategic Financial Consulting - Real-World Results |
(303) 444-3300 |