FINANCIAL MARKETS, ACCOUNTING AND MANAGEMENT

The main goal of the course is to give students a full insight of the modern financial markets, their opportunities and their risks.


Starting from a quick recap of the classic portfolio theories, the course will move into the world of modern trading, asset allocation, data analysis and decision taking processes, through a deepened analysis of quantitative methodologies available today.

Then the course will move into the world of derivatives, financial leverage, short selling, combined positions for taylored payoffs and risk management.


Derivatives will be explained both in terms of their speculative and hedging purposes, in order to show to the students their real nature.

The last part of the course will be focused on some other markets that became very popular over the last decade: the Forex market, Contracts for Difference (CFDs), certificates (investment and leveraged), binary options. In order to let the students fully understand how structured products can be constructed, a short outline on exotic options (barrier options, knock in and knock out) will be covered.


Combining text slides, data mining softwares, technical analysis tools, trading platforms, exercises, the students will achieve a full understanding of the matter.

At the end of the course students should be able to analyze any asset on any market, and to apply investing strategy fully aware of opportunities and risks coming with them.

To know the basics of mathematics and statistics might help in understanding some issues.

Financial markets: how to analyse data and take proper investing decisions.
Quantitative trading: opportunities and problems.
Presentation of a study: random walk versus the distribution of returns on the real markets
Derivatives: futures and options; speculative and hedging strategies. Corporate hedging with derivatives. Trading strategies with derivatives.
Modern financial products: Forex, CFDs, Certificates.

Slides presented in classes

Written exam.

10 multiple choice questions valued 2 points each; only one correct answer for each, no penalties for wrong answers.

6 mini-exercises, 5 valued 2 points each, 1 valued 3 points.

Maximum achievable score is 33. Score equal or higher than 31 means 30 with distinction.

The trading game can provide bonus points for the exam, but does not concur to the distinction.

Time: 90 minutes

Traditional lectures with slides, but with an eye on the real financial markets, using a real-time trading platfrom to show how it works in the real world. Backtesting softwares, open source tools, excel spreadsheets, VBA programming.

English

written