This course introduces students to global international financial markets’ main concepts. It focuses on the common types of international financial markets, such as capital markets with stock and bond markets, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. This course is aimed at students wishing to acquire a sound understanding of the main opportunities in international investments. Students examine international financial markets and institutions and their critical role in the global economy. Topics include the elements that constitute a global financial institution; types of financial institutions and markets; global market structure differences; recent market failures, their causes, and solutions; and global financial regulation and reform.

This course covers the valuation of a wide variety of fixed income securities and derivatives including pure discount bonds, coupon bonds, forwards and options on fixed income securities, interest-rate swaps, floating-rate notes, and mortgages. The course focuses on analytic tools used in bond portfolio management and interest rate risk management. These tools include yield curve construction, duration and convexity, and formal term structure models.

This course presents and analyzes derivatives, such as forwards, futures, and options. These instruments have become extremely popular investment tools over the past several decades, as they allow one to tailor the amount and kind of risk one takes, be it risk associated with changes in interest rates, exchange rates, stock prices, commodity prices, inflation, weather, etc. The course continues on the derivatives markets, such as exchange-traded and over-the counter derivative markets, examining the fundamental issues in motives for using derivatives (hedging, speculation, and arbitrage). They are used by institutions as well as investors, sometimes to hedge (reduce) unwanted risks, sometimes to take on additional risk motivated by views regarding future market movements. The course defines the main kind of derivatives, shows how they are used to achieve various hedging and speculating objectives, introduces a framework for pricing derivatives, and studies several applications of derivative-pricing techniques outside derivative markets.

This course focuses on international financial decisions. Financial problems corporations resulting from operating in an international environment will be analyzed. Major topics covered are corporate strategy and the decision to invest abroad, forecasting exchange rates, international portfolio diversification, managing exchange risk, taxation issues, cost of capital and financial structure in the multinational firm, and sources of financing.

Throughout this course participants will learn how to apply technical analysis as a standalone trading methodology or as a supplement to fundamental analysis using tools that have been quantitatively tested - global scope with applications to equities, fixed income, commodities and foreign exchange markets.