Khoi Nguyen Tran / Finance
Melbourne, Australia  ·  Available November 2026 – February 2027

Valuation, portfolios
and market research.

Finance undergraduate at RMIT University, graduating June 2027. I build DCF and dividend discount models, construct and attribute equity portfolios, and run regression work on rates and macro data. Outside coursework I have invested my own money in Vietnamese equities since 2024.

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Portrait of Khoi Nguyen Tran
Degree
Bachelor of Business — Finance major
Economics & Business Analytics minors
Graduating
June 2027, RMIT University Melbourne
Core toolkit
Excel financial modelling, LSEG Workspace, R, Python
Credentials
CFI Financial Modeling & DCF Valuation
Eligible for CFA Level I

About

Profile

I am a Finance student who prefers to learn a method by building it end to end — pulling the filings, setting the assumptions, defending the number when it does not come out flattering.

Most of what is on this page started as university assessments, and I have kept them here in full detail rather than reduced to one line on a résumé. A valuation is only interesting if you can see the assumptions behind it: the required return, the growth fade, the terminal rate. So each project below is laid out as a tearsheet — the method, the numbers it produced, and the conclusion it supported.

That includes the results that went against me. My actively managed portfolio underperformed its benchmark by 1.87 percentage points, and the attribution is unambiguous about why: stock selection cost more than allocation earned. I would rather show that and explain it than present only the work that landed well.

Alongside the coursework I co-founded a small snack venture in Melbourne, where I keep the books myself — monthly income statement and balance sheet, payables, receivables and bank reconciliation, all in Excel. It is a small operation, but it is the part of my experience where the numbers are mine from first transaction to closing balance.

Selected work

9 projects · academic results
Valuation & corporate finance
Individual BAFI1008 High Distinction

Capital structure & cost of capital — Woolworths Group

ASX: WOW, FY2022–2025, benchmarked against Coles and Metcash

Capital structure
35% debt / 65% equity
Equity beta
0.48
WACC — Woolworths
4.63%
WACC — Coles / Metcash
4.03% / 2.82%
Dividend yield
4–5%

MethodBond and equity analysis, beta estimation, WACC build, dividend smoothing, and capital structure assessed against trade-off and pecking order theory.

ConclusionA defensive balance sheet trading stability against return. Marked High Distinction on bond analysis, risk analysis and cost of capital; the rubric noted flawless computation of the company's WACC.
Group — my section BAFI1042 High Distinction

Equity valuation — JB Hi-Fi, dividend discount model

Group report; I led Section 6, the multi-stage DDM valuation

D₀ (FY25 ordinary dividend)
A$2.75
Required return on equity (CAPM)
10.13%
Growth: stage 1 → terminal
11.41% → 2.55%
Intrinsic value
A$43.57
Market price, 8 May 2026
A$73.29
Premium to intrinsic value
+40.56%

MethodMulti-stage DDM with a sustainable growth rate fading to terminal, built on five years of dividend history, ROE and payout ratio.

ConclusionOvervalued — a sell signal, consistent with the group's overall recommendation. High Distinction on the DDM criterion; the marker's comment on the section was "well done".
Individual CFI case study

Strategy & financial analysis — Monic

Organic fashion retailer, Phoenix AZ; Corporate & Business Strategy, CFI

Sales, 2015 → 2017
$5,600 → $33,356
Gross margin
49.1% → 64.9%
Net income
−$260 → $12,427

MethodCompetitive analysis, strategic group map and supply chain review, tied back to three years of income statement analysis.

ConclusionMargin expansion, not volume alone, drove the turn to profitability — the strategic position and the financial statements told the same story.
Portfolio management
Individual BAFI1042

Portfolio construction & performance attribution

Two A$1,000,000 portfolios, held 11 May – 5 June 2026

Passive (full replication)
−2.22%, matched benchmark
Tracking error / beta
0.00% / 1.00
Active (6 stocks)
−4.09%
Shortfall vs benchmark
−1.87 pp
Sharpe / information ratio
−3.25 / −1.04
Allocation vs selection
+0.46% / −2.33%

MethodBenchmark-weighted passive replication against a six-stock active book chosen on macro view, sector outlook, company catalysts and five-year ratio analysis in LSEG Workspace; evaluated on tracking error, attribution and risk-adjusted return.

ConclusionThe active book lost to its benchmark. Attribution isolates the cause: allocation added 0.46% while stock selection cost 2.33%, so the recommendation was the passive mandate.
Group — my part BAFI3271

Bond portfolio immunisation — cashflow matching

Group assignment; I built and forecast the yield curve (Part 2)

Liability stream
A$50m (2025) → A$5m (2036)
Curve built
AU govt, 1–30Y
Spot date
17 Oct 2025
Forecast horizon
3 points to 30 Jan 2026

MethodAustralian government benchmark curve from 1 to 30 years at the spot date, sourced from Refinitiv, plus three forecast dates — the pricing basis the rest of the team immunised against.

ConclusionA curve set that let the portfolio's cashflows be matched to a declining eleven-year liability schedule.
Rates, macro & econometrics
Individual BAFI3271

Interest rate risk & bank stability

RBA cash rate vs the risk profile of four major Australian banks, 2014–2024

Observations
48
Cash rate coefficient
+15.06
t-statistic / p-value
4.24 / <0.001
Model R²
0.56
Curve shape, 2019 → 2023
upward → flat → inverted

MethodMultivariate OLS with bank risk (Z-score) on the cash rate, bank fundamentals — size, capital-to-asset, cost-to-income, non-interest income — and macro controls, read alongside the funding cost and net interest margin channel.

ConclusionRate rises improved bank stability in the short run while building repricing and liquidity risk further out. Cost-to-income was also significant at the 1% level.
Individual ECON1066 R

Determinants of methane emissions

Cross-country log-log OLS

GDP per capita elasticity
0.3619
— p-value
2.48e-05
Population elasticity
1.0851 (t = 40.56)
Agricultural value added
−0.0058 (p = 0.50)

MethodLog-log specification in R, with elasticities, t-statistics and formal hypothesis testing on each coefficient.

ConclusionPopulation scale dominates: near-unit elasticity, against a much weaker income effect and no significant agricultural value-added effect.
Group — my parts ECON1066 R

Determinants of under-five mortality

Group assignment; I wrote Parts F and G and integrated the team's R code

Baseline model R²
0.8438
Part F — regional dummies
0.8770
Part G — plus fertility rate
0.8884
Adjusted R², Part G
0.8799
Observations
171

MethodRegional dummy variables against an East Asia & Pacific reference, then an extended specification adding total fertility while controlling for income, sanitation, immunisation, health expenditure and TB — plus debugging the group's scripts into one pipeline that ran.

ConclusionRegion carries real explanatory weight beyond income and health inputs, and fertility adds further beyond that.
Individual ECON1611 Python

Data cleaning & predictive OLS pipeline

End-to-end preparation and modelling with a train/test split

Dataset
866 rows × 31 columns
Duplicate rows removed
100
Missing values handled
10 per column
Outliers caught
−110 totals, 193 °C

Methodpandas for exploratory analysis and cleaning, categorical standardisation and date conversion, with test predictors aligned to the training set before prediction.

ConclusionImpossible values — negative totals, a 193 °C reading — surfaced before modelling rather than after, which is where most of the work in a forecast actually sits.

In the market

Own capital · since 2024
Vietnamese equities

Fundamental research, real positions

I have traded Vietnamese listed equities with my own money since 2024 — small size, chosen deliberately so the lessons cost little. Positions are taken through ACBS, and the work behind them is fundamental: reading the financial statements, valuing the business, following the news flow, and writing out an investment thesis before buying.

I follow banking and real estate most closely. ACB is the name I know best, and the one I would open on if you asked me to talk through a thesis.

Financial statements Valuation Investment thesis Banking Real estate
Bitcoin futures

A structured technical process

Separately and at low leverage, I trade BTC futures on a multi-timeframe technical process: trend read on the 4-hour chart, entries located on the 15-minute, using RSI, MACD and double EMA on TradingView.

On risk I want to be precise rather than flattering: I apply stop-loss discipline, but I do not yet run systematic position sizing or a formal trade journal. That is the next thing to fix.

RSI MACD Double EMA 4H / 15m Low leverage

Personal trading, undertaken at small scale to learn how markets behave in practice. No performance figures are published here because they are self-reported and unaudited — what carries over into professional work is the research process, not a return number.

Experience & leadership

3 roles
Mar 2026 — Present
Melbourne

Co-Founder

Snack venture — Vietnamese snacks for students and the Vietnamese community in Melbourne

  • Co-founded and run a small retail operation on roughly A$1,000 of starting capital, selling through a Melbourne community channel.
  • Grew gross revenue from A$269.67 in March 2026 to A$386.47 in April, around 43% month on month; net revenue rose from A$211.46 to A$352.98.
  • Built the order management database — orders by channel, product, customer, delivery and payment method — and prepare the monthly income statement and balance sheet in Excel, tracking revenue, COGS by product, inventory of about A$1,064, payables and a short-term loan.
  • Handle supplier invoices from receipt through payment, reconcile bank transactions against orders and the books, and follow up customer balances outstanding.
Mar 2026 — Jun 2026
RMIT University

Secretary

Vietnamese International Student Association

  • Kept the committee's records, schedule and internal communications, and prepared and organised documentation across concurrent student activities.
Mar 2026 — Jul 2026
RMIT University

Peer Mentor

RMIT Peer Mentoring

  • Mentored three first-year students through their transition into university — academic expectations, university resources, and where to go when something goes wrong.

Education & credentials

Qualifications

Education

Bachelor of Business — RMIT University
Melbourne campus · July 2025 – June 2027 (expected)
Finance major; minors in Economics and Business Analytics
RMIT Vietnam
Nam Sài Gòn campus, Ho Chi Minh City · October 2024 – May 2025
Finance major, Economics minor
Relevant coursework
Corporate Finance · Equity Investment & Portfolio Management · Financial Markets and Institutions · Money and Debt Markets · Basic Econometrics · Business Decision Making

Certifications

Financial Modeling & Financial Analysis Specialization
Corporate Finance Institute via Coursera · July 2026
Financial and operational modeling · reading financial statements · financial analysis fundamentals · corporate & business strategy
DCF Valuation Modeling Fundamentals
Corporate Finance Institute via Coursera · July 2026
CFA Program
Eligible to register for Level I
Other
IELTS 6.5 · Microsoft Office Specialist, PowerPoint

Skills

Modelling
Excel financial modelling — DCF, DDM, three-statement models, comparables
Valuation & corporate finance
WACC and cost of capital, beta estimation, capital structure, dividend policy
Portfolio
Construction, performance attribution, tracking error, Sharpe and information ratio
Rates & fixed income
Yield curve construction, immunisation and cashflow matching, interest rate risk
Quantitative
OLS regression and hypothesis testing; working familiarity with R and Python (pandas)
Accounting
Basic bookkeeping in Excel — income statement, balance sheet, COGS, inventory, payables and receivables
Platforms
LSEG Workspace, TradingView, Microsoft 365, Adobe Acrobat
Languages
Vietnamese (native), English

Get in touch

Open to internships & graduate roles

If you are hiring for equity research, asset management, valuation or corporate finance — or you simply want to argue about a valuation assumption — write to me. Fill this in and it will open a drafted email in your own mail client; nothing is sent from this page.

Open drafted email Opens your mail app with the message prefilled.
Email
trankhoinguyen300906@gmail.com
LinkedIn
/in/khoi-nguyen-tran-finance
Based in
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Work rights
Vietnamese citizen · Australian student visa with work rights
Availability
Full-time early Nov 2026 – late Feb 2027, and from June 2027
Locations
Melbourne · interstate Australia · Vietnam