Introduction to Investing and Finance by Martin Shkreli

Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI_riscmviI&list=PLJsVF3gZDcuTxcdH5FmQRTd6MiJ29
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Summary
Martin Shkreli reduces the concepts of finance and investing to its bare bones. He runs
through the underlying concepts behind Finance and then breaks it down into real world
applications so that the concepts don’t appear as mere silos and textbook definitions.
I feel that the first 3 lessons are especially useful as a crash course of Finance and more
importantly, Corporate Finance. The whole basis of Finance is much like how the industry is
held together by Microsoft Excel and circular referencing, if you fail to understand how ALL
the concepts are interdependent (to varying levels of extent, but related nonetheless), you
will feel lost and overwhelmed.
Since all FNCE101 students would have had gone through Financial Accounting, they would
have already have some basic knowledge of how to navigate through financial statements,
which will help said students tide through arguably the most intimidating section in Martin
Shkreli’s Finance videos: Looking through 10-Ks (he even goes into why 10-Ks and 10-Qs
exist, as well as overviews of other filings when he encounters them; corporate governance
topics come along with this naturally).
But the biggest draw of this video series would have to be his delivery. Martin Shkreli does it
in an almost condescending manner that comes off as funny (the videos are screen
recordings of the livestreams of his lessons, which include live questions from viewers who
he interacts with in informative and funny manner).
After the first 3 lessons, he goes into more complex and in-depth concepts and exercises like
Financial Modelling and LBOs, and he does this step by step so that students can follow
along his train of thought, which is another plus point. Martin Shkreli is a highly intelligent,
shrewd, cunning, and painfully brutal person. As he talks us through his train of thought, we
get a lot of insight into the mind of an investor guided by the principals of capitalism. We
are not just learning about textbook concepts and definitions of Finance, but also the
opportunistic and competitive behavior required to be a successful (albeit controversial)
practitioner of Finance.
As an ending point, it may also shed some light onto Martin Shkreli’s case, the operations of
his pharmaceutical company, his public mishaps, and how all of them have amalgamated
into landing him in jail. To the interested students, this shows them the other side of
Finance, that it is not just all about numbers.