Some people look at numbers and try to figure out the meaning behind them by thinking through how the numbers were generated. What does it mean for a company's future that EBITDA declined by 14% sequentially but rose 5% year-over-year?
My first instinct when I see numbers is to try to find mathematical patterns in them, and then try to decode economic implications from those patterns rather than the raw numbers. Maybe this is why I'm not enjoying my five weeks as a research analyst at a bulge-bracket bank. I want to run regressions; they want me to read and report on 10-Qs and 10-Ks. You can only write the sentence "[Accounting metric] [grew/declined] by [X%] sequentially from [A] in [quarter Q] to [B] in [quarter Q+1], but [declined/grew] by [Y%] year-over-year from [C] in [quarter Q-4]." in so many ways.
Naturally I agree that the financials are invaluable. It's just that I'd rather split my time into 90% analysis and 10% reporting, rather than 10% analysis and 90% reporting.
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