re: High level finance class is a new level of intense

I'm late chiming in, but had been meaning to circle back. lynx, I'm not familiar with NPVq but would be curious to review anything you might have on it.

Re: IRR vs NPV, I view them like a flathead and a Phillips - similar in what they are trying to accomplish (aid in an investment decision) but nonetheless different in some key ways that give them different uses for different scenarios.

In the project finance / corporate finance / what I'd call "corporate PE / VC" work that I do, I prefer IRR because it requires one fewer variable (don't have to estimate a discount rate), and it's how PE tends to track our business. For instance, if our business is currently producing a 9.0% levered IRR on a PE owner's original investment, I want new projects to be in excess of that in order to be accretive to their yield. There's some nuance behind why that is so important in my little niche of the world, but IRR definitely reigns supreme. Of course, your analysis would typically include a discussion of NPVs as well with sensitivity provided around the discount rate. I tend not to use a corporate WACC or ROE as my discount rate, because I like the analytical rigor that goes into supplying a different discount rate for each project based on its own individual risk factors.

We should have one mammoth thread on valuation. Having worked in a number of different areas of finance now (both institutional and corporate), it's interesting to think back on and discuss how your views are refined as your knowledge broadens.