QUANTITATIVE PORTFOLIO THEORY & INVESTMENT - 2023/4

Module Overview

This module builds on the content covered in Financial Economics 1 during the autumn semester to investigate investors' decisions in modern financial markets.

It explores the effects of investors' choices under uncertainly on asset allocation and asset pricing.

Module provider

Economics

Module Leader

LAZOPOULOS Ioannis (Economics)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 5

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 2

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

n/a

Module content

Indicative content includes:
-Market Efficiency
-Choice under certainty and capital budgeting techniques
-Portfolio management
-Capital asset pricing model
-Arbitrage pricing theory
-Option pricing and risk management.

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

n/a

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate awareness of investors' behaviour and critical understanding of portfolio management and asset pricing models.

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

A midterm test worth 30% of the final mark

Final exam worth 70% of final module mark.

Formative assessment and feedback Students receive feedback on a continuous basis in the form of verbal feedback through discussion of open-ended questions during lectures or questions provided in the workshop problem sets. Students also receive detailed solutions to questions/exercises against which they can compare their answers. Through the availability of previous exam papers and the provision of mock coursework questions, students are able to familiarise themselves with the structure of the assessment. Moreover, after the University designed marking period, student will receive feedback on their midterm to improve their performance in the remainder of the module and the final assessment.

Formative assessment and feedback

Students will receive verbal feedback during lectures and tutorials through direct questioning. After the class tests, the test questions, solutions, and main feedback will be discussed in class. All this feedback will help students to judge their own performance and prepare for the final exam. Practice exams will provide the students with guided learning so they can identify issues they may be having with the content by comparing their answers to the provided solutions before the tests. Readings from the textbook will also be assigned so the students can see the material presented in a different way since breadth of perspective is typically helpful. Feedback on the writing assignment will also help the students to identify any misconceptions. In addition, students will be encouraged to attend student consultation hours of the teaching staff to receive further individual verbal feedback.

Module aims

• Introduce students to core elements of finance theory in order to prepare for the material in Corporate Finance in the final year.
• Introduce students in the use of advanced asset-pricing techniques.
• Equip students with professional skills that are relevant to careers in the finance industry.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to:

Recorded lectures enhance students' understanding of investors' decisions in the face of uncertainty the consequences of these decisions on assets' pricing.

Lectures emphasize the importance of the theory whereas workshops are designed to help students to connect the content taught to empirical applications.

The learning and teaching methods include:

2 hours of lecture per week x 11 weeks
1 hour workshop per week x 10 weeks

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: ECO2062

Other information

This module incorporates some of the University's five pillars of learning as follows:

Sustainability: This module teaches the fundamentals of financial and investment strategy, including adaptation to changing contexts in terms of technology, institutions, and markets.

Global capabilities: Real life finance examples are used in this module to enable students to build awareness of different cross-country financial systems and investment possibilities.

Employability: This module will provide students with necessarily technical skills to pursue a career in the financial sector.

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2023/4 academic year.