Instructor

S.BASKAR

Semester

Spring’20

Course Difficulty

Pre- midsem the course is really basic but as the course proceeds it gets tougher

Time Commitment Required

3 hrs worth of lectures every week which are enough if pay full attention

Grading Policy and Statistics

40%of the highest marks is passing. Grading is relative to the highest marks. Easy to get above a 7 but difficult to score a 10.

Attendance Policy

All pre-recorded lectures, no attendance

Pre-requisites

Si417 is a hard pre-requisit.

Evaluation Scheme

10 quizzes of 10 percent each.

Topics Covered in the Course

Types of financial securities, Present value and future value of money
Cash flows, IRR, Annuities, Perpetuities
Valuation, Bonds, Duration of bonds
Term structure of interest rates, spot rates, forward rates
Arbitrage and Forward pricing, Futures
Swaps
Types of Options, Option strategies, bounds on option prices, put-call parity
Conditional expectation, Measurability (very theoretical part starts from here)
Martingale theory, random walk, Brownian motion
Properties of Brownian motion and martingales

Teaching Style

All the lectures were pre-recorded with weekly help sessions with the professor. The notes were really good and self-sufficient.

Tutorials/Assignments/Projects

The assignments and tuts were important as the exams were directly based on them

Feedback on Exams

The tests in the start were easy and scoring. As the course progressed they became tougher and took more time to solve. A few of them were very calculative.

Motivation for taking this course

Wanted to complete my minor and also wanted to explore finance. This is one of the only courses available to btechs which touches on finance related topics.

Course Highlights

The concepts taught here have practical applications in these areas. It is a mix of probability concepts, financial topics and theoretical aspects.

Course Importance

No follow-up courses as such but gives a good overview of finance related topics

How strongly would I recommend this course?

If one wants to explore finance and quant, a good way to start off

When to take this course?

I took the course in my 4th sem. SI417 is a prerequisite hence it can be taken in any sem after you have completed the course.

References Used

Prof notes were enough

Review By: Vidushi Verma