Last Update: Everything is now posted (Posted: Tuesday, November 15, 2011)


 

Economics 282: Investment Finance
Fall 2011, TuTh 1:15—3, Willis 211

 

Instructor: Pavel Kapinos

Office: Willis 322                                                                                                      

Email: pkapinos@carleton.edu                                                          

Office hours: We 2-4; Tu 3-5; appt

 


Syllabus


Date

Lecture

References [Recommended}

September 13 (Tu)

Lecture 1: Course Overview: Introduction to the class and investment finance

BKM 1,2

September 15 (Th)

Lecture 2: Bonds 1—Bond Prices and Yields

BKM 14.1-4 | Notes | Lecture2.xls | lecture2_examples.xlsx

September 20 (Tu)

Lecture 3: Bonds 2—Term Structure of Interest Rates

BKM 15.1-5 | Living Yield Curve | What Makes the Yield Curve Move | lecture3.xls

September 22 (Th)

Lecture 4: Bonds 3—Managing Bond Portfolios

BKM 16.1-3 [skip callable and mortgage-backed material], 15.6 | [Carleton Alum Is a Bond Fund Manager, Congress Pressures the Fed] | lecture4.xls

September 27 (Tu)

Lecture 5: Swaps | Stocks 1—Security Analysis

17,18.1-2 | Example 23.6 (pp. 804-805) | Notes

September 29 (Th)

Lecture 6: Stocks 2—Pricing | Risk and Return

BKM 18.3-4 | BKM 5.3-8 | Quincunx | [PE Ratios in Practice: Are Stocks Still Overvalued?]

October 4 (Tu)

Lecture 7: Risk Aversion | Equity Premium Puzzle | Optimization | Statistical Review

Notes on Risk Aversion | BKM Appendix A | Optimization Primer (3.2 is optional) | Stats Review

October 6 (Th)

Midterm I

Lectures 1-6 | Problem sets 1—3 | Midterm I (Fall ’07), Midterm I (Winter ’10)

October 11 (Tu)

Lecture 8: Capital Allocation between Risky and Risk-free Assets

BKM 6

October 13 (Th)

Lecture 9: Optimal Risky Portfolios

BKM 7

October 18 (Tu)

Lecture 10: Single-index Model | CAPM 1

BKM 8.1-3, 9.1-2,5 | lecture10.xls

October 20 (Th)

Lecture 11: CAPM 2 | APT

BKM 10 | lecture11.xls

October 25 (Tu)

Lecture 12: Evaluating CAPM and APT: Empirical Evidence on Security Returns

BKM 9.3-4, 13.1-3, 11.1-2 notes

October 27 (Th)

Lecture 13: Market Efficiency, Anomalies, and Behavioral Finance

BKM 11.3-4, 12

November 1 (Tu)

Lecture 14: Portfolio Performance Evaluation

BKM 5.5, 8.4-5, 24

November 3 (Th)

Midterm II

Lectures 1-13 | Problem sets1—6 | Midterm II (Fall ’07), Midterm II (Winter ’10)

November 8 (Tu)

Lecture 15: Options I—Strategies

BKM 20.1-4

November 10 (Th)

Lecture 16: Options II—Pricing

Class notes | BKM 21 | lecture16.xls

November 15 (Tu)

Lecture 17: Options III—American vs. European | Course Overview

Class notes | lecture17.xls

November 19 (Sa)

Final: 12-2:30pm

Everything


Problem Sets:
PS1 | due on Thu, 9/22 | Solution, Excel work
PS2 | due on Thu, 9/29 | Solution, Excel work
PS3 | due on Tue, 10/4 | Solution
PS4 | due on Thu, 10/20 | Solution
PS5 (data) | due on Thu, 10/27 | Solution, Excel work: 1b, 2
PS6 | due on Tue, 11/1 | Solution
PS7 | due Tue, 11/15 | Solution
PS8 | Optional; ungraded | Solution

Extra Credit Assignment: Description | Groups | Stocks


Financial Likbez:
What Would Machiavelli Do? The Ends Justify the Meanness by Stanley Bing
The Winner’s Curse by Richard Thaler
Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Macroeconomy, and Why It Matters for Capitalism by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller
Robert Haugen’s Quantitative Investment website and his trilogy: The Inefficient Stock Market: What Pays Off and Why, Beast on Wall Street: How Stock Volatility Devours Our Wealth, and The New Finance: Overreaction, Complexity, and Uniqueness
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Taleb (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is also interesting)
T. F. Crack’s Heard on the Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviews
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein
Freefall by Joseph Stiglitz
Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram Rajan
The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan’s Great Recession by Richard Koo
Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises by Charles Kindleberger, Robert Aliber, and Robert Solow



Links:
Econ 110 (Spring 2011)
Macroeconomic updates: Global Economic Forum by Morgan Stanley
Financial and Economic News: CNN MoneyEconomist, Wall Street Journal
Financial data and news: Yahoo! Finance, Google Finance, Morningstar.com
Macroeconomic data for the US: FRED II database by the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis
Educational resources: Investopedia, Stock Market Game, Wall Street Prep, Beat the Market