Toptal Finance Blog

Stock options are widely used in public and private markets, both as malleable trading tools and for employee compensation. Yet many do not understand the components behind how they are priced. This guide discusses what drives the behavior of call and put options and how they can be deployed within portfolio management.

Over the last few years, the world has witnessed an explosion of interest surrounding Artificial Intelligence. Nevertheless, there still exists a significant gap in understanding and knowledge about AI applications, particularly amongst the investor community. This article, the first of a two-part series on the topic, is a collection of thoughts and advice by Toptal Finance Expert Carolyn Deng, based on her experience having founded an AI startup as well as having worked as VC Investor.

Hidden in Excel and Power BI is a powerful data analysis pack named Get & Transform (previously known as Power Query). It is an ETL pack for cleaning and sorting raw data from a range of input sources, such as CSV and text files. This tutorial demonstrates how to–quite literally– get and transform data in Excel, in ways that can help the data analyst save time and uncover more insight.

Relatively unknown until recently, representation and warranty insurance is an interesting—and often extremely effective—tool for helping M&A deals cross the finishing line. By shifting the financial risk for breaches of representation and warranties to an insurance firm, these arrangements can enable sellers to receive all the purchase price proceeds at closing as opposed to being exposed to liquidity risk post deal close.

Budgeting can be a drawn-out process, yet oftentimes once the year starts and results diverge, they become forgotten. Instead of budgeting just with qualitative methods, managers should combine them with quantitative tools. Comparing regressed historic trends with future expectations can be more accurate and ultimately ensure the budget survives the year.

Due in part to the unceremonial nature of its title, the value-creation potential of business plan consultants is often misunderstood and underappreciated. Questions such as, “What do they do that I can’t?”, “Why do they cost so much?” and, “Don’t you think we can handle this ourselves?”, all too often haunt their practice.

Having prolifically added value to 25+ clients across a range of industries, sizes, and mandates, Toptal Finance Expert, Josh Chapman, sheds light on the full scope of business plan consulting. What it is to be a great business plan consultant, how they create value, and what skills, attributes and experiences constitute the greats vs. the pretenders.

A decidedly less sexy, albeit critical, part of a CFO’s job description is working capital management and optimization. There are countless examples of companies that are forced to incur unnecessary debt and other financial obligations to meet their short-term financing needs, when in fact ample cash is sitting idly stuck in working capital.

But working capital optimization is hard to get right and often requires significant cross-functional efforts to execute effectively. In this article, Toptal Finance Expert Emilio Labrador draws on 25 years of professional experience across multiple industries to outline some of his main suggestions and approaches on how to tackle working capital management projects.