Learn the general concepts of financial markets and economy. You will see the difference between primary and secondary markets and learn about markets for different products. You will also look at various economic Indicators and their influence on the markets. After completing this course, you will have a much stronger background of financial markets and ready to go to the next stage in the Specialization. This course is designed to help students with very little or no finance background to learn the basics of investments.

This course teaches you the concepts of risk and expected return. This course presents an overview of the basic concepts and techniques used to construct financial portfolios. You will learn about the investment process and get a very good understanding of economic, industry, and company analyses. We will also look at understanding and interpreting major portfolio management and risk concepts. Through this course, you will discover the basic concepts of Modern Portfolio Theory. In the second half of the course we explore the frameworks to measure investment performance, as well as the various measures of investment performance. Finally, you will learn how to measure performance of equity, bonds and hedge funds. After completing this course, you will be able to appreciate the details that go into the creation of investment portfolios.

Through this course, you will learn how individuals and firms make financial decisions, and how those decisions might deviate from those predicted by traditional financial or economic theory. We will explore the nature of these biases and their origins, using insights from psychology, neurosciences and experimental economics on how the human mind works. From these biases, you will be able to examine how the insights of behavioral finance complement the traditional finance paradigm. We also look at the micro and macro biases. Finally, we will explore how these insights describe more complicated topics such as fat tail events and financial crises.

Discover the basic concepts of needs analysis, investment policy, asset allocation, product selection, portfolio monitoring and re-balancing. We will look at the types of institutional investors - pension funds and insurance companies. You will learn the client management life cycle and dive into portfolio management as a process. You will learn the basic concepts, principles, and the major styles of investing in alternative assets. Finally, we study the impact of digitization on investment strategies.