Financial Modelling Cheat Sheet: Excel and Bloomberg
After AI in India's Financial Ecosystem, the Day-1 analyst question becomes simple: can you navigate Excel and Bloomberg at speed? At Goldman Sachs, Kotak IB, or any buy-side desk, you will be expected to navigate Excel and Bloomberg at speed. The shortcuts and commands below are used by working analysts daily, and the practical signal is readiness for Day 1 productivity.
- Day 1 at Goldman Sachs, Kotak IB, or any buy-side desk, you will be expected to navigate Excel and Bloomberg at speed.
- Top Excel shortcuts matter because they help inspect formulas, lock rows and columns, audit models, move between worksheets, and keep model presentation clean.
- Bloomberg Terminal is the primary research tool at every investment bank, asset manager, and hedge fund in India.
- If your campus has Bloomberg access, practise these commands daily.
- Use COMP, BQ, FA, EQS, DES, BI, RATD, and DDIS for common finance workflows such as comps, financials, screening, company briefs, consensus, and debt maturity schedules.
- A quick Bloomberg workflow can build a trading comps table for Indian Private Banks in under 10 minutes.
- Print this page and practice until muscle memory.
Big Picture
This cheat sheet has three parts: the Excel shortcuts used in financial modelling, the Bloomberg Terminal commands used by finance professionals, and a quick Bloomberg workflow for building a comps table. The point is not just to recognise the commands, but to practise them until they are automatic.
Top Excel Shortcuts for Financial Modelling
The Excel shortcuts below are used by working analysts daily. In modelling, they matter because they help inspect formulas, lock references, audit sheets, navigate multi-tab models, and prepare clean outputs.
Bloomberg Terminal Key Functions for Finance Professionals
Bloomberg Terminal is the primary research tool at every investment bank, asset manager, and hedge fund in India. If your campus has Bloomberg access, practise these commands daily.
Format: type the command and hit <Go> (the yellow key).
Quick Bloomberg Workflow - Building a Comps Table in 5 Steps
Goal: Build a trading comps table for Indian Private Banks in under 10 minutes on Bloomberg.
Result: A live, auto-updating trading comps table that would take 2-3 hours to build manually.
Conclusion
For a Day-1 analyst, the core idea is speed with discipline: Excel shortcuts keep the model clean, Bloomberg commands pull the research inputs, and the 5-step COMP workflow turns Indian Private Banks into a live, auto-updating trading comps table.
The common mistake is treating Excel shortcuts and Bloomberg commands as a list to recognise rather than a workflow to practise until muscle memory. On Day 1, that costs time because the expectation is to navigate multi-tab models, pull financials, screen peers, and export a live comps table at speed.