To be a competent financial analyst, one should have the ability to communicate results from a financial analysis effectively. This can be done by creating presentations with charts and graphs which summarizes financial data and visualize trends. Here is a list of the ten most common types of graphs:

1. Line graphs: great for displaying multiple series of related data
2. Bar graphs: useful for presenting a single data series
3. Combo chart: usually with a bar and line chart to present data series in different scales and units
4. Scatterplot: perfect for graphing the relationship between two data series that are correlated
5. Waterfall chart: useful for explaining the variance between actual and budgeted results
6. Pie chart: good for illustrating the percentage breakdown of data points
7. Histogram: used to display the distribution of a dataset
8. Gauge chart: great for showing single data point on a scale with different categories
9. Area graph: useful for visualizing the weight of data series
10. Spider / radar graph: shows qualitative data on a scale