What is an Opinion Letter? An opinion letter, also called a legal opinion, is a letter issued by a legal counsel that facilitates a lender’s due diligence process in a transaction. The opinion letter is used in credit analysis to help determine whether to lend to a borrower or not. Lenders often require an opinion…
What is an Arbitrageur? An arbitrageur is an individual who earns profits by taking advantage of inefficiencies in financial markets. Arbitrage opportunities arise when an asset is priced differently between multiple markets at the same time. Such price differences are inefficiencies resulting from deficiencies in the marketplace. A successful arbitrageur profits by simultaneously purchasing financial…
What is Economic Obsolescence (Real Estate)? Economic obsolescence refers to the loss of value of a real estate property that is caused by factors that are external to the property. Such a form of obsolescence is usually incurable and the owners cannot fix the specific cause of depreciation. Economic obsolescence results in a decline in…
What is Multiple Linear Regression? Multiple linear regression refers to a statistical technique that is used to predict the outcome of a variable based on the value of two or more variables. It is sometimes known simply as multiple regression, and it is an extension of linear regression. The variable that we want to predict…
What is Elastic Net? Elastic net linear regression uses the penalties from both the lasso and ridge techniques to regularize regression models. The technique combines both the lasso and ridge regression methods by learning from their shortcomings to improve the regularization of statistical models. The elastic net method improves lasso’s limitations, i.e., where lasso takes…
What is LASSO? LASSO, short for Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator, is a statistical formula whose main purpose is the feature selection and regularization of data models. The method was first introduced in 1996 by Statistics Professor Robert Tibshirani. LASSO introduces parameters to the sum of a model, giving it an upper bound that…
What is the Financial Modeling Code? The financial modeling code serves as an essential guide to financial analysts and companies looking to predict future financial performance based on various assumptions and historical performance. The code explains how to build financial models, providing guidance on the models’ layout, appearance, and functionality. Users can create understandable, robust,…
What is a Decision Tree? A decision tree is a support tool with a tree-like structure that models probable outcomes, cost of resources, utilities, and possible consequences. Decision trees provide a way to present algorithms with conditional control statements. They include branches that represent decision-making steps that can lead to a favorable result. The flowchart…
What is Gradient Boosting? Gradient boosting is a technique used in creating models for prediction. The technique is mostly used in regression and classification procedures. Prediction models are often presented as decision trees for choosing the best prediction. Gradient boosting presents model building in stages, just like other boosting methods, while allowing the generalization and…
