Session 1 First Step in Finance

Aswath Damodaran introduces the foundational concepts of finance in this lecture. He outlines six key building blocks: the concept and structure of business, cash flows, risk, the time value of money, valuation, and trading. Damodaran explains how finance is forward-looking and focuses on cash flows rather than accounting earnings. He also discusses the nature of risk and its measurement, the intuition behind the time value of money, and the basics of valuation for different types of cash flows.