Aswath Damodaran

Professor of Finance at NYU Stern School of Business. Known as the “Dean of Valuation.” Born in Chennai, India; moved to Los Angeles in 1979 for his MBA at UCLA, then completed a PhD and joined NYU’s faculty, where he has taught for over 40 years.

Makes all his course materials — lectures, notes, datasets — freely available at his website (damodaran.com). Runs one of the most widely followed finance blogs. Author of multiple textbooks and popular books including The Little Book of Valuation, Narrative and Numbers, and Investing Fables.

Best known for the Narrative Valuation framework: start with a story about what kind of company this is, then convert the narrative into three financial drivers (revenue growth, operating margins, reinvestment) to derive intrinsic value.

Episodes in the wiki

• Aswath Damodaran on Story-to-Numbers Valuation, ESG Scepticism, and the Option to Abandon (Richer, Wiser, Happier, ~2022)

Key positions

• Every valuation is a story. Articulate the narrative first; the numbers are the story converted into financial drivers.
• A consistent value investor must sell when price exceeds value, not just buy when price is below value. “Buy and hold forever” is logically inconsistent with value investing.
• ESG as sold in 2020–22 was a false promise: the company-level benefit (lower risk) and the investor-level benefit (higher returns) are mutually exclusive. Goodness always requires trade-offs.
• Bitcoin is the millennial gold: a store of value for people who have given up trusting institutions. Its monetary function is undermined by its speculator base.
• The option to abandon: preserve the ability to walk away from any job by keeping lifestyle costs below income from the first day of employment.