A86032 Asset Management

At the end of the course the student will be able:

• to perform the asset allocation of third parties taking into account the different level of risk aversion of each investor;
• to maximize the performance of a diversified portfolio in a risk-return perspective taking advantage from the extraordinary variety of financial instruments available to investors, ranging from fixed income products to hedge funds.
• to execute a wise stock picking, being able to fairly weigh the past performance and the growth expectation of each asset;

The course provides the student with a theoretical & practical background in portfolio investments & risk management, with the principal goal of introducing the principles of asset valuation from an applied perspective.

The following concepts will be introduced and discussed:

1. Risk aversion, portfolio theory, risk-control and diversification.
2. Equilibrium asset pricing versus no-arbitrage pricing; the CAPM and the APT.
3. Equity valuation
4. Performance evaluation.

The course is intended for students who want to become a money manager, an investment professional or who just want to be a wise investor. Within a rigorous analytical framework, the course offers plenty of real world examples.

Four sessions are given by an industry practitioner with focus on the investment process, the fixed income markets and the asset management industry.

Students profit from a hands on approach including:

• An experiential learning laboratory, described in detail below.
• Training in using Bloomberg, a leading software for trading and data analytics in finance.

The course will run under a workshop format requiring active students’ involvement. Lectures are held throughout the entire semester. Students are responsible for LEARNING the material before coming to class and for providing a meaningful contribution to the discussion led by the instructor. It means to be able to provide accurate and sensible answers and comments whenever personally quizzed by the instructor (it will happen several time during each lecture) and to contribute new and original ideas.

Bloomberg sessions will benefit of the Bloomberg laboratory in the basement of the Library.

In preparing for lectures students are required to know any detail of the required textbook chapters, but are also invited to extend their reading to the academic papers that will be provided by the instructors, and to related paper discovered through personal search.

You are responsible for consulting on a regular basis the website of the course on “my.liuc.it” where updates, additional material and slides about the course are posted. No excuse accepted for any failure during the course you may incur into due to a delayed consultation of the website.