ASWATH DAMODARAN
NYU professor known as the "Dean of Valuation" who values every company on Earth for free
The man who literally teaches Wall Street how to value companies — for free. Damodaran posts every lecture, every spreadsheet, every valuation model on his website for anyone to download. He values Tesla, Apple, and Bitcoin on his blog while hedge fund analysts making $500K a year read along taking notes. He's turned down Wall Street jobs repeatedly because he'd rather teach 400 NYU students every semester. The Dean of Valuation could be rich. He chose to be useful instead.
Net Worth
$10 million
Nationality
Indian-American
Time Horizon
Long-Term
Risk Appetite
5 / 10
CAREER & BACKGROUND
Born in 1957 in Chennai, India. MBA from the Indian Institute of Management.
PhD from UCLA. Joined NYU Stern School of Business in 1986 and has been there ever since — nearly 40 years at the same institution.
Won the Giblin, Wachtel, and Glucksman teaching awards at NYU repeatedly — essentially sweeping every teaching prize the school offers. His corporate finance and valuation courses have consistently been rated the most popular at Stern.
His real influence exploded with the internet. He started posting his full lecture videos, datasets, and valuation spreadsheets online in the 2000s.
His YouTube channel has millions of views. His blog — "Musings on Markets" — is read by professional investors worldwide.
He democratized valuation education before "democratize" became a tech buzzword.
COMPANIES & ROLES
NYU Stern School of Business is his institutional home. He's a professor of finance, not a fund manager.
His "company" is his body of work — 12 books, hundreds of papers, thousands of hours of free lectures, and a complete valuation dataset for every publicly traded company on Earth.
He maintains a massive database on his website that includes cost of capital, risk premiums, and financial metrics for every country and industry. Investment banks and consulting firms use this data.
It's free.
He occasionally consults on valuation disputes — courts and regulators bring him in as an expert witness when companies disagree about what something is worth.
INVESTING STYLE & PHILOSOPHY
Damodaran values companies using discounted cash flow models — projecting future cash flows and discounting them back to present value. He believes every asset has an intrinsic value that can be estimated, even if the estimate is imprecise.
He draws a sharp distinction between "valuation" (estimating what something is worth based on fundamentals) and "pricing" (estimating what the market will pay based on comparables and momentum). Most of Wall Street does pricing.
He does valuation.
He actually invests his own money based on his valuations — primarily in individual stocks. He publishes his portfolio and trades on his blog, which is remarkably transparent for an academic.
His returns are respectable but not spectacular, which he's honest about.
THE PLAYBOOK
Risk Approach
Moderate. Damodaran invests in individual stocks based on his valuation models, which means he sometimes holds concentrated positions in undervalued companies.
He bought Apple, Facebook, and Vale at various points based on his valuations.
But he's not a leveraged trader. He's a professor with a diversified personal portfolio who puts money behind his ideas.
The stakes are modest compared to professional fund managers.
Money Habits
Lives modestly in New York. His wealth is primarily his NYU salary and investment returns — not hedge fund fees.
He has repeatedly turned down offers from Wall Street firms that would pay him multiples of his academic salary.
He gives away all his educational content for free — lectures, spreadsheets, datasets. He could easily charge for premium content.
He doesn't. He believes education should be accessible.
BIGGEST WIN
His public valuation of Apple in 2012 during a period of pessimism. He valued Apple at significantly more than the market price and published his analysis on his blog.
He bought the stock. Apple subsequently became the most valuable company in the world.
His valuation framework identified the opportunity when many analysts were bearish.
BIGGEST MISTAKE
His Tesla valuation. Damodaran has valued Tesla multiple times, often coming to conclusions that the stock was overvalued.
Tesla's stock price kept rising far beyond his estimates. He's been honest about this on his blog — acknowledging that his traditional valuation models struggle with story-driven stocks where narrative overwhelms numbers.
It's a limitation he openly discusses.
FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY
Damodaran believes every asset has a value that can be estimated — but that the estimate is always uncertain. The goal isn't precision.
It's a reasonable range. If the market price is far outside that range, you might have an opportunity.
He also believes valuation is a craft, not a science. Two smart people can value the same company and get different numbers.
That's fine. What matters is that the assumptions are explicit, logical, and testable.
His deepest conviction: stories and numbers must work together. A valuation without a story is just a spreadsheet.
A story without numbers is just a fantasy.
FAMILY & PERSONAL LIFE
Married with children. Keeps family life private.
His public persona is entirely professional — the professor who values companies and blogs about it. He's active on Twitter where he engages in valuation debates with professional investors.
EDUCATION
Born in Chennai, India. Undergraduate degree from Madras Christian College.
MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. PhD in finance from UCLA.
Joined NYU Stern in 1986 and has stayed ever since.
BOOKS & RESOURCES
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QUOTES (6)
A valuation without a story is just a spreadsheet. A story without numbers is just a fantasy.
The hardest part of valuation is not the math. It's confronting your own biases about the company.
If you can't value something, you can't invest in it rationally. You can only speculate on it.
I post all my valuations online for free because education should be accessible to everyone, not just people who can afford business school.
The biggest mistake investors make is confusing pricing with valuation. They are fundamentally different activities.
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