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.  

The course grade for students attending classes will be based also on cases, Bloomberg certificates, experiential learning laboratory (see below).

Cases: There are three case assignments with the following weights:

1. Cases 1: 0%
2. Cases 2: 40%
3. Cases 3: 60%

Cases should be done with a group of maximum 4 members. Students are responsible for organizing these groups and they are obliged to communicate the contribution of each member if it is not equally weighted.  Each case will be distributed at least one week in advance and posted by 7pm on the due date on the course Moodle.

Bloomberg training: Students are required to attend at least 70% of the lectures and pass the Bloomberg Essential Training Program and to post on the course Moodle the Training Acknowledgement Certificates by June 30st.

All students must undergo the final written exam as per university calendar, starting with two sessions in Spring/Summer 2016.

Attending students who:

• delivered timely all the three cases (with no delay exemption);
• pass the written exam at the first session in Spring/Summer  2016 (Final Exam date tbd);

will be graded on the basis of the following weights:

1. Cases: 60%
2. Bloomberg Certificates: 10%
3. Experiential Learning Laboratory: 10%
4. Final Exam: 20%

All other students will be graded 100% on the basis of the written exam.