WORLD SCIENTIFIC LECTURE NOTES IN FINANCE – serie

This book, written by Joakim Westerholm, Professor of Finance and former trading professional, is intended to be used as basis for developing courses in Securities markets, Trading, and Market microstructure and connects theoretic rigor with practical real world applications.Market technology evolves, the roles of market participants change, and whole market segments disappear to be replaced by new ways to exchange securities. Yet, the same underlying economic principles continue to drive trading in securities markets. Thus, the scope of the book is global, providing a framework that is relevant both for current market designs and for future markets we will see develop. It is designed to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving field.The book contains a selection of lecture notes through which students will gain an in-depth understanding of the mechanism that drives trading in securities markets. The book also contains another set of lecture notes with more advanced, research-based material, suitable for Honours or Master level research students, or for PhD candidates. The material is self-explanatory and can also be used for self-study, preferably in conjunction with assigned readings.

This volume presents lecture notes for a course in behavioral finance, most suitable for MBA students, but also adaptable for a PhD class. These lecture notes are based on the author's experience in teaching behavioral finance classes at Bocconi University (at the PhD level) and at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo (MBA).Written in a way that is user-friendly for both teachers and students, this book is the first of its kind and consolidates all the material necessary for a course on behavioral finance, balancing psychological concepts with financial applications. Material formerly presented only in academic papers has been transformed to a format more suitable for students, while the most important issues have been highlighted in boxes that can form the basis of a lecturer's teaching slides.In addition to corralling all the currently scattered materials into one book, a neat logical order is introduced to the subject matter. Behavioral finance is put in a context relative to the other disciplines of finance, its history is outlined and the way it evolved — from an eclectic collection of counter examples to market efficiency into a bona fide discipline of finance — is reviewed and explained.The 17 topic-based chapters in this book are each intended for a 90-minute lecture. The first five chapters (Part 1) provide the psychological and financial foundations of behavioral finance. The next 12 chapters (Part 2) are applications: Chapters 6–13 cover the essentials while Chapters 14–17 are special, elective topics.

This is an introduction to an investment course that focuses on basic models used in the financial industry for investment and decision making. The course begins with an overview of the investment environment in developed markets, followed by a more in-depth analysis of key investment topics. These topics include modern portfolio theory, asset pricing models, term structure of interest rates, stock and bond portfolio management and evaluation of portfolio performance. Modern finance extensively uses the concept of arbitrage, or rather the lack of it in financial markets, and the course highlights such uses in different circumstances.The course takes a hands-on approach with the aid of a software package, Maple™, the details of which will be explained during the first lecture. Consequently, most lectures will be divided between a theoretical lecture and a lab — a practical implementation of the theoretical material of the lecture. The use of the Maple™ software in this course simulates, to a certain extent, a professional environment. It allows visualizations of different concepts, minimizes tedious algebraic calculations and the use of calculus while equipping students with intuitive understanding. This is facilitated by the symbolic power of Maple™ and its excellent graphic and animation capabilities.Institutional material is surveyed very concisely, so the reader gets an appreciation of the investment "lay of the land". It is enhanced by an eLearning unit, self-administrated quizzes as well as a stock market game, utilizing StockTrack™. StockTrack™ introduces students to trading in the real world by practicing different types of orders as well as introducing conventions common in the investment community.

This is an introduction to an investment course that focuses on basic models used in the financial industry for investment and decision making. The course begins with an overview of the investment environment in developed markets, followed by a more in-depth analysis of key investment topics. These topics include modern portfolio theory, asset pricing models, term structure of interest rates, stock and bond portfolio management and evaluation of portfolio performance. Modern finance extensively uses the concept of arbitrage, or rather the lack of it in financial markets, and the course highlights such uses in different circumstances.The course takes a hands-on approach with the aid of a software package, Maple™, the details of which will be explained during the first lecture. Consequently, most lectures will be divided between a theoretical lecture and a lab — a practical implementation of the theoretical material of the lecture. The use of the Maple™ software in this course simulates, to a certain extent, a professional environment. It allows visualizations of different concepts, minimizes tedious algebraic calculations and the use of calculus while equipping students with intuitive understanding. This is facilitated by the symbolic power of Maple™ and its excellent graphic and animation capabilities.Institutional material is surveyed very concisely, so the reader gets an appreciation of the investment "lay of the land". It is enhanced by an eLearning unit, self-administrated quizzes as well as a stock market game, utilizing StockTrack™. StockTrack™ introduces students to trading in the real world by practicing different types of orders as well as introducing conventions common in the investment community.

This book is intended to be used as a basis for developing courses in entrepreneurial finance. While many universities, particularly in the United States, have entrepreneurial finance on their curriculum, there is often a gap between the large selection of entrepreneurship courses and courses providing applicable hard skills in finance and accounting. Early-stage ventures cannot succeed without capital and careful management of cash flow for example. Entrepreneurs need skills, such as how to negotiate with investors, so that they don't end up giving up the control of their venture too early. This book aims to fill this gap by providing guidelines for how successful courses can be set up to train finance, accounting, and corporate strategy students for a career in the start-up and venture capital industry.

This book contains contributions by the best-known and consequential researchers who, over several decades, shaped the field of financial engineering. It presents a comprehensive and unique perspective on the historical development and the current state of derivatives research. The book covers classical and modern approaches to option pricing, realized and implied volatilities, classical and rough stochastic processes, and contingent claims analysis in corporate finance. The book is invaluable for students, academic researchers, and practitioners working with financial derivatives, market regulation, trading, risk management, and corporate decision-making.

Risk management has become one of the key requirements for insightful decision-making. What are risks sources? How are they being managed? This book describes certainty, uncertainty, financial risks, methods of risk mitigation, and risk management.The first chapter of this book represents some milestones in risk management and introduces the main aspects of financial risk management. The following chapters discuss various types of financial risk such as market risk, credit risk, operational risk, liquidity risk, interest rate risk, and other financial risks. The last chapter describes enterprise risk management which binds together all the risks.This book, which is accompanied by PowerPoint presentations, is aimed at lecturers, students, and practitioners with an interest in risk management. The book is the fruit of the authors' long years of work in the field of risk management, serving as a risk management advisor and teaching an MBA-level academic course on the topic for economics and business administration students.Resources are available to instructors who adopt this book. More details at

This is the fourth volume of edited books constituting an eclectic collection of papers in behavioral finance based on contributions by participants of Israel Behavior Finance conferences. Like its predecessors, this book continues to be edited by Professor Itzhak Venezia (this book with Dr Rachel Calipha), who carefully selected the papers to be included in this volume.Behavioral finance has evolved significantly since its inception, and chapters in this collection reflect the diverse and dynamic nature of this field. They not only build upon the foundational concepts established in the earlier volumes but also explore novel financial products, themes, and ideas that have gained rapid prominence in recent years: From the integration of artificial intelligence into investment decision-making processes, to the analysis of the alternative meats industry, and various other alternative investment instruments such as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). This collection, therefore, pushes the boundaries of what is conventionally associated with behavioral finance.

Written for undergraduates, this book is dedicated to fixed income fundamentals that do not require modeling the dynamics of interest rates. The book concentrates on understanding and explaining the pillars of fixed income markets, using the modern finance approach implied by the "no free lunch" condition. It focuses on conceptual understanding so that novice readers will be familiar with tools needed to analyze bond markets. Institutional information is covered only to the extent that is necessary to obtain full appreciation of concepts.This volume will equip readers with a solid and intuitive understanding of the No Arbitrage Condition — its link to the existence and estimation of the term structure of interest rates, and to valuation of financial contracts. Using the modern approach of arbitrage arguments, the book addresses positions and contracts that do not require modeling evolution of interest rates. As such, it welcomes readers lacking the technical background for this modeling, and provides them with good intuition for interest rates, no arbitrage condition, bond markets and certain financial contracts.

Written for undergraduates, this book is dedicated to fixed income fundamentals that do not require modeling the dynamics of interest rates. The book concentrates on understanding and explaining the pillars of fixed income markets, using the modern finance approach implied by the "no free lunch" condition. It focuses on conceptual understanding so that novice readers will be familiar with tools needed to analyze bond markets. Institutional information is covered only to the extent that is necessary to obtain full appreciation of concepts.This volume will equip readers with a solid and intuitive understanding of the No Arbitrage Condition — its link to the existence and estimation of the term structure of interest rates, and to valuation of financial contracts. Using the modern approach of arbitrage arguments, the book addresses positions and contracts that do not require modeling evolution of interest rates. As such, it welcomes readers lacking the technical background for this modeling, and provides them with good intuition for interest rates, no arbitrage condition, bond markets and certain financial contracts.

This volume will introduce the reader to basic topics of corporate finance. The notes will provide an integrative model that will help students evaluate projects, examine financing alternatives and assess a firm.With problems and detailed solutions at the end of each chapter, this volume will also greatly benefit financial managers and investors. Corporate finance is a discipline from the firm's perspective and addresses the concerns of the Chief Financial Officer of the firm. Additionally, investors need to understand why firms make certain decisions so that they better recognize what drives firm value.These lecture notes assume no previous knowledge of finance, and are written in conversational style that makes the topics more accessible and easy to comprehend and absorb.

This volume will introduce the reader to basic topics of corporate finance. The notes will provide an integrative model that will help students evaluate projects, examine financing alternatives and assess a firm.With problems and detailed solutions at the end of each chapter, this volume will also greatly benefit financial managers and investors. Corporate finance is a discipline from the firm's perspective and addresses the concerns of the Chief Financial Officer of the firm. Additionally, investors need to understand why firms make certain decisions so that they better recognize what drives firm value.These lecture notes assume no previous knowledge of finance, and are written in conversational style that makes the topics more accessible and easy to comprehend and absorb.

This volume presents lecture notes for a course in behavioral finance, most suitable for MBA students, but also adaptable for a PhD class. These lecture notes are based on the author's experience in teaching behavioral finance classes at Bocconi University (at the PhD level) and at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo (MBA).Written in a way that is user-friendly for both teachers and students, this book is the first of its kind and consolidates all the material necessary for a course on behavioral finance, balancing psychological concepts with financial applications. Material formerly presented only in academic papers has been transformed to a format more suitable for students, while the most important issues have been highlighted in boxes that can form the basis of a lecturer's teaching slides.In addition to corralling all the currently scattered materials into one book, a neat logical order is introduced to the subject matter. Behavioral finance is put in a context relative to the other disciplines of finance, its history is outlined and the way it evolved — from an eclectic collection of counter examples to market efficiency into a bona fide discipline of finance — is reviewed and explained.The 17 topic-based chapters in this book are each intended for a 90-minute lecture. The first five chapters (Part 1) provide the psychological and financial foundations of behavioral finance. The next 12 chapters (Part 2) are applications: Chapters 6–13 cover the essentials while Chapters 14–17 are special, elective topics.

This book, written by Joakim Westerholm, Professor of Finance and former trading professional, is intended to be used as basis for developing courses in Securities markets, Trading, and Market microstructure and connects theoretic rigor with practical real world applications.Market technology evolves, the roles of market participants change, and whole market segments disappear to be replaced by new ways to exchange securities. Yet, the same underlying economic principles continue to drive trading in securities markets. Thus, the scope of the book is global, providing a framework that is relevant both for current market designs and for future markets we will see develop. It is designed to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving field.The book contains a selection of lecture notes through which students will gain an in-depth understanding of the mechanism that drives trading in securities markets. The book also contains another set of lecture notes with more advanced, research-based material, suitable for Honours or Master level research students, or for PhD candidates. The material is self-explanatory and can also be used for self-study, preferably in conjunction with assigned readings.

These lecture notes are thought for Master courses in Finance, Fintech and Quantitative Finance programmes. We fully subscribe to the philosophy that post-graduate students should be offered courses that are really at the cutting edge of the technologies and advances that are disrupting the financial industry and delve deep into topics such as A.I., machine learning, and their importance for Asset Management.In these notes, the illustration of the theory of Finance is paired with practical applications to real-life asset allocation problems. A hands-on approach is proposed to construct and manipulate databases to build portfolios, assess their performance and manage their risk. The course begins with a section on the fundamentals on individual choice to market valuation, covering the traditional Markowitz mean-variance approach, market-based asset pricing and Arbitrage-based pricing theory.Empirical modelling in finance is then introduced by illustrating its working and its historical evolution. The translation of financial theory into action on data is driven by building predictive models for asset prices and returns. Basic models are explored, and programming emerges as an essential prerequisite for data manipulation. Readers can acquaint themselves with the statistical software R and exhibit the application of theoretical concepts to financial data, illustrated by sample programs, exercises, and corresponding solutions.

These lecture notes are thought for Master courses in Finance, Fintech and Quantitative Finance programmes. We fully subscribe to the philosophy that post-graduate students should be offered courses that are really at the cutting edge of the technologies and advances that are disrupting the financial industry and delve deep into topics such as A.I., machine learning, and their importance for Asset Management.In these notes, the illustration of the theory of Finance is paired with practical applications to real-life asset allocation problems. A hands-on approach is proposed to construct and manipulate databases to build portfolios, assess their performance and manage their risk. The course begins with a section on the fundamentals on individual choice to market valuation, covering the traditional Markowitz mean-variance approach, market-based asset pricing and Arbitrage-based pricing theory.Empirical modelling in finance is then introduced by illustrating its working and its historical evolution. The translation of financial theory into action on data is driven by building predictive models for asset prices and returns. Basic models are explored, and programming emerges as an essential prerequisite for data manipulation. Readers can acquaint themselves with the statistical software R and exhibit the application of theoretical concepts to financial data, illustrated by sample programs, exercises, and corresponding solutions.