Portfolio and Risk Management

Overview

Class Central Tips

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.

Syllabus

Basics of Investments

The first module discusses the basics of investment process and the time value of money. The concept of time value of money is extended to value assets with cash flows. In the process, we develop shortcuts for valuing annuities and perpetuities. The student is then introduced to the concept of Risk and Return. The module ends with a discussion of Utility theory.

Concept of risk and return

The second module introduces the student to the concept of portfolio math and the concept of diversification. The student is taught how to construct the investment opportunity set with risky assets and risk-free asset.The student is then introduced to the concept of Market portfolio and the Capital market line.

Understanding investments

This module introduces the CAPM model and the concept of Beta. The student is taught how to calculate the Beta of a security. The student is also introduced to arbitrage pricing theory.