I felt very embarrassed when I wrote this article because it’s a story of failures and I learned during my upbringing to be ashamed of failing.

But no one is successful from the beginning. Failures are inevitable. The pain and fear caused by failures we all feel should be shared and talked about. Then we accept the failures, learn from them, and rise up again.

My failures

Laugh at me if you want, I’m terrified of failing. Growing up in China as a single child, my parents have tried to compare me with every other kid who is better. …

PYTHON FOR FINANCE

Time has value

Time has value — not just the wisdom it gives you, but also the time value of money.

You must have heard of this:

$100 today is worth more than $100 tomorrow.

It is so simple, but reveals the underlying principle behind many of our behaviors and decisions:

• Investing or holding cash. Investing allows you to earn interest whereas holding cash does not generate additional value.
• Paying upfront or deferring it. Deferring the payment enables you to make money via investing before you have to make the payment.
• Conducting a project or not. Yes if the return of the project…

WRITING TO SHARING

Legally, I am Chinese and only Chinese as Chinese person cannot possess dual-nationality.

During Covid-19, I am Chinese and only Chinese. The Chinese who was said to be blamed for the global outbreak.

I am Chinese

Eight years ago, I was feeling purely Chinese.

I was born and grew up in Chengdu, a “mid-sized” city situated at the heart of China with 16 million population. Right there, I learned how to speak, write, subtract, add, and also how to treat people. Until finishing university, I never left my city apart from the weeks of holidays with my parents.

The inland China was not…

Python for finance

Who am I

Today I spend all my time at work, creating a big data modelling product with Spark infrastructure. I have a team that I truly love working with. I enjoy what I do for a living, and every morning I wake up feeling excited.

You are very lucky, you might be thinking. Yes, but is it just luck? Two years ago, I was an accountant, a tech dummy, and I was full of doubt of myself.

Two weeks ago, I started sharing my learning throughout my journey via blogging. …

PYTHON FOR FINANCE

Why do I care?

I’ve always been very interested in financial valuations. In daily work I frequently encounter problems that are easy yet very difficult. Difficult as the tools I was familiar with (such as Excel) can not solve them without having to include lots of formulas in the cells. It quickly became messy and hard to maintain when the data volume is large.

A few of these problems include:

• Forward rate: Calculate the interest rate between two periods for different date and currency groups
• Discounting: Discounting future cash-flows with corresponding yield curves
• Amortization: Applying straight-line or effective interest rate to amortize certain assets
• …