Build a winning investment portfolio. Improve your investment strategies with practical skills, insights, and analytical tools.
Suggested by: Coursera (What is Coursera?)
No prior knowledge required
No unnecessary risks
In this course series, designed with four courses, you will learn the essential skills for portfolio management and personal investing. All investors – from large capital issuers to the smallest individual investors – face common investment problems:
In this series you will learn how to think, discuss and formulate solutions to these investment questions.
You will begin with an overview of the global capital markets and unique tools that characterize the investment options available to the modern investor.
You will then learn how to construct optimal investment portfolios that manage risk effectively, and how to exploit an understanding of behavioral biases and irrational behavior in capital markets.
You will also learn best practices in investment portfolio management and performance evaluation, as well as contemporary investment strategies.
By the end of your final project, you will have mastered the analytical tools, quantitative skills, and financial knowledge required for success in long-term investment management.
To see a video overview of this course series, click here!
Get a head start in the world of financial investing! This first course is designed to help you become an informed investor by providing you with the foundational knowledge for continued success in money management. You’ll start by learning about the role of capital markets and financial assets in a functioning economy. From there, you’ll learn about the range of instruments the market offers across major asset classes, including their characteristics and valuations. You’ll discover how capital markets work in the real world, focusing on how and why securities trade and how different market types differ from each other. You’ll also learn the basics of algorithmic trading, dark pools, leveraged buying, and short selling.
At the end of the course, students will be able to:
This course is organized in a way that is accessible to a variety of knowledge levels and provides you with the fundamentals required for managing money in the post-crisis world.
This module introduces the four-course Investment and Portfolio Management specialization. This module discusses how the first course, Capital Markets and Financial Assets, is organized. It describes the steps in the investment management process, which guides the focus of the specialization. It also reviews basic concepts and tools such as the time value of money, calculating returns, discounts, and compound interest.
Topics covered include:
In this module and the next two, we will discuss the main institutional features of capital markets and financial instruments. We will ask the following questions: Why do capital markets exist? What is their function? What are financial assets and how do they differ from real assets? How does it all fit together? In fact, here I hope you will see the big picture of the entire financial system and how it functions.
Module 2 focuses on fixed income securities. We will begin with a review of the fundamentals of bond valuation. You will learn about short-term money market instruments, U.S. Treasury bills, and corporate bonds. After Module 2, you will be able to describe fixed income securities, understand their institutional characteristics, and identify their cash flows. Finally, you will learn how to value fixed income securities such as notes, zero coupons, or coupon bonds and calculate yields.
Topics covered include:
In Module 3, we will continue our review of capital markets and financial instruments. This time, we will focus on two more major asset classes: securities and derivatives. You will learn how stocks differ from fixed-income securities, what the cash flows associated with stocks and preferred stocks are, and how to calculate the value of a stock. You will also learn about options strategies. After completing Module 3, you will be able to describe all the major asset classes, including derivatives such as options, futures, and forward contracts. You will be able to explain how they differ from each other and how they are paid for.
Topics covered include:
In this module, we will discuss how the capital markets actually work. We will talk about different trading platforms and the mechanics of trading securities. I will focus on many of the latest terms and trends in securities trading to familiarize you with the way the capital markets work in institutions. After this module, you will be able to compare different trading platforms, trading mechanics, and explain different types of orders, including methodologies such as leveraged buying and short selling; you will be familiar with the language and terminology needed to be a skilled investor.
Topics covered include:
When an investor is faced with a portfolio selection problem, the number of possible assets and the different combinations and proportions in which each can be held can seem confusing. In this course, you will learn the basic principles that guide optimal portfolio construction, diversification, and risk management. You will begin by acquiring the tools to characterize the investor’s risk and return ratio. You will then analyze how a portfolio selection problem can be constructed and learn how to find and implement the optimal portfolio solution. Finally, you will learn about the main models for determining asset prices at market value.
Learners will be able to:
Investors tend to be their own worst enemies. In this third course, you will learn how to leverage an understanding of behavioral biases and irrational behavior in the capital markets. You will begin by learning about the various behavioral biases – mistakes that investors make and understanding the reasons for them. You will learn how to identify your own mistakes as well as those of others and gain an understanding of how these mistakes may affect investment decisions and the capital markets. You will also delve into how different preferences and investment horizons affect the selection of the optimal asset allocation. After this course, you will be more effective in overcoming the biases to do the wrong things at the wrong times and in designing an investment strategy that best suits your or your clients’ investment profile and needs.
In this course, you will learn about the latest investment strategies and performance evaluation. You will begin by learning performance metrics for investment portfolios and discuss best practices in evaluating portfolio performance. You will explore various evaluation techniques such as style analysis and attribution analysis and apply them to evaluate various investment strategies. Special emphasis will be given to capital market innovation and current investment trends.
After this course, learners will be able to:
Test your knowledge of investment and portfolio management through five weeks of hands-on trading experiences:
Your graduation experiences are relevant to managing real investment portfolios and the graduation report can be shared with family, friends, and potential employers.
At the end of the final project, you will integrate concepts from all four courses, including:
