The Investment Management Specialization teaches professional asset management of securities using portfolio management and behavioral aspects of finance. Specific topics include: an introduction to the basics of finance, how to evaluate risk and expected return, the behavioral aspect of investment strategy, and current trends. 

The Program

1. Introduction to Financial Markets
   Learn the general concepts of financial markets and economy. You will see the difference between primary and secondary markets and learn about markets for different products. You will also look at various economic Indicators and their influence on the markets. After completing this course, you will have a much stronger background of financial markets and ready to go to the next stage in the Specialization. This course is designed to help students with very little or no finance background to learn the basics of investments.
2. Portfolio and Risk Management
   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. You 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. You will learn how to measure performance of equity, bonds and hedge funds.
3. Behavioral Investing
   Through this course, you will learn how individuals and firms make financial decisions, and how those decisions might deviate from those predicted by traditional financial or economic theory. You will explore the nature of these biases and their origins, using insights from psychology, neurosciences and experimental economics on how the human mind works. From these biases, you will be able to examine how the insights of behavioral finance complement the traditional finance paradigm.
4. Investment strategy
   Discover the basic concepts of needs analysis, investment policy, asset allocation, product selection, portfolio monitoring and re-balancing. You will learn the client management life cycle and dive into portfolio management as a process. You will learn the basic concepts, principles, and the major styles of investing in alternative assets. Finally, you’ll study the impact of digitization on investment strategies.
5. Financial Markets and Investment Strategy Capstone
   In the Capstone project, you have to design an investment plan for an individual at three different stages of his life. Depending on the stage of his life the individuals biases, risk preferences and wealth requirements change. You have to keep in mind all of these and design an appropriate investment plan for each stage of his life. You will use the concepts learned in the 4 courses to achieve this target. You should consider different assets and different markets to achieve the investors goals by building an optimal portfolio which matches his profile. In the end you should also evaluate the performance of his portfolio.