I love this response so much it makes me really happy.
The cool thing is the method is "advanced" but the education you need is fairly basic. The most advanced thing anyone will use is an exponent. This is the main reason so many big names in finance have engineering backgrounds. Finance math is not "too" complicated.
And your takeaway is 100% correct. Creating these models is just 1 tool you can use. They are highly subjective and it is an art not just a science. People tend to model companies and fall in love with the valuation model they created and rely on it too much. It is just a tool and nothing me.
I have made most my money investing in medium or long-term investment horizons. Day trading is fun but rarely do the returns (especially on a risk adjusted basis) outperform a good medium to long-term investment strategy. In my experience anyways 😊
There is some correlation stuff that comes into play when doing cost of equity but there are formulas in excel and google sheets that do this for you so that makes it a lot easier to pick up in today's society.