Data Update 1 for 2020: Setting the Table

Aswath Damodaran describes his annual data collection and analysis process covering 44,394 publicly traded companies globally, compiled to compute operating, pricing, and risk metrics organized around corporate finance principles. He explains his methodology for gathering macro data (risk-free rates, equity risk premiums, default spreads, tax rates, country risk premiums) and micro data (company-level metrics aggregated into 94 industry groupings), while addressing key caveats about data bias, the limitations of crowd wisdom, and the importance of combining data with intuition and logic in valuation and corporate financial analysis.