Financial Calculators & Buffett Worksheets

[glennj]

Whilst re reading one of the Buffettology books I came across references to a Texas Instruments BA 35 calculator that has lots of pre programmed financial functions. Does anyone out there use one and how good are they?

I've got a twenty year or older HP-11c which is quite useful but was thinking of upgrading. What opinions are there on the best financial calculators available?

[Halebop]

Excel and OpenOffice support common financial algorithms. Also, there are numerous web sites with financial calculators built in such as www.moneychimp.com

[goodguy]

Glen, I bought one of the calculators a few years ago and it's great to use. Unfortunately they are no longer sold in NZ (I got a friend who was going to the US to get me one and the cost then was
$42 NZ.) I would imagine they are also available in Au.The most useful thing about them is that the Buffettology books explain in simple language exactly how to use them for what we want....much better than trying to get the advice in a little booklet written in China.

[Dazza]

its in chinese
not china
i suppose we are writing in england are we goodguy?!

[Halebop]

Actually Dazza a little booklet can be written in English, in China and not make any sense (or at least not meet acceptable syntax conventions). I'm sure we've all experienced something similar?

[stephen]

I use spreadsheet programs for this kind of thing (Gnumeric or OpenOffice in my case, but Excel will do for you Windows types).

Learning to drive a spreadsheet is a great thing anyway, so I recommend investigating this option. I would be crippled in any analysis without a spreadsheet, and I imagine that goes for most STers.

[Mick100]

The Texas instruments BA 35 is not available in NZ.

After trying a few out I bought a
CASIO FC100 FINANCIAL CONSULTANT
- got it at Boise Office Products

(instructions for buffet calculations on page 40 of the instruction book)

It's easy to use as far as financial calculators go. It has all the functions of the texas instruments one recommended in the Buffet books.

cheers

Mick.

[saintjohn]

mick,

quote:(instructions for buffet calculations on page 40)


Page one should tell you how to spell his name

sj

SJ - Mick100 was working out the cost of his smorgasbord.[:o)]

[Mick100]

quote:Originally posted by Longtack

SJ - Mick100 was working out the cost of his smorgasbord.[:o)]



First there was one, now there are two pedantic little .......... :D

,

[TheBossMan]

I use a Texas BA II and it is great.

I'm sure you can buy it on Ebay.

Cheers

[glennj]

Thanks guys! The replies have given me some ideas.

I can and do use Excel at times but was after something to use when away from the pc.
Re websites, I can't get broadband (or cell phone
coverage for that matter) out in the sticks where I live so website calculators are frustratingly slow.

I'll explore the TI & Casio options further.

[glennj]

Follow up from above.

Ended up getting a BA II from Boise Office Products. When I visited their P North shop they didn't have any in stock but were very helpful and had one couriered to me the next day.

As other posters mentioned both Texas Instruments and Boise confirmed that the TI BA 35 is not available in NZ. The Casio as described by Mick100 is available but is quite a
bit more expensive than the BA II. I didn't check the Casio out once I found that the BA II could do what I wanted.

The BA II handles the routines that the Buffett book examples use the BA 35 for. Some minor differences exist but it is easy to work out what to do to make things work with the different calculator.

The time value of money calcs are really quick with the new BA II calculator.

A bonus of learning to drive the new calc has been going over some of the Buffett material again. Buying good stocks at the right price is worth trying hard to get right!
With a bit of research & using the calc it's easy to come up with a buy price that will deliver a projected acceptable compounding rate of return.
This is quite topical in the current bear phase.
Some good stocks that have been overpriced are falling in price and may soon become buys for those of us who practice value/contrarian investing.