Investment Management Specialization

In this course, you will dive into the concepts of rationality and irrationality and understand how they impact our investment decisions and what the consequences can be at the market level.

You will first explore the different biases that we, as humans, are subjected to when facing investment decisions and how they may impact the outcomes of these decisions. Moreover, you will see how emotions and ethical concerns such as honesty and trust influence market participants. When they are considered as a group rather than individually, you will discover how rationality and irrationality can drive asset prices to and away from their fair value. Finally, you will be presented with different portfolio construction methodologies and investment styles that make up the landscape of today's portfolio management industry. At key points throughout the course, you will benefit from the practical knowledge of experts from our corporate partner, UBS, in how to build and manage clients' portfolios.

In this course, you will gain an understanding of the theory underlying optimal portfolio construction, the different ways portfolios are actually built in practice and how to measure and manage the risk of such portfolios.

You will start by studying how imperfect correlation between assets leads to diversified and optimal portfolios as well as the consequences in terms of asset pricing. Then, you will learn how to shape an investor's profile and build an adequate portfolio by combining strategic and tactical asset allocations. Finally, you will have a more in-depth look at risk: its different facets and the appropriate tools and techniques to measure it, manage it and hedge it. Key speakers from UBS, our corporate partner, will regularly add a practical perspective on these different topics as you progress through the course.

In this course, you will learn about the famous dichotomy between active and passive investing, how to appropriately measure and analyze investment performance and what the future trends in the investment management industry are.

You will first learn about absolute and relative performance, risk-adjusted returns and how to decompose investment performance. The focus will then shift to the two main categories of investment vehicles, active and passive funds, and what they entail in terms of expected performance. Finally, you will explore the worlds of sustainable finance, neurofinance and fintech, three areas of research that will shape the future of the investment management industry. You will also benefit from the insights of experts from UBS, our corporate partner, on the practical implementation of the various concepts we will develop in this course.

In this Capstone project, you will have to choose between three different characters (each with a unique set of financial constraints and objectives) and design an appropriate wealth plan for them over the next 5 years.

You will have to use the knowledge you gained in each of the four preceding courses to reach that objective. Indeed, you will need to know which assets to consider and how to manage them depending on changes in the economic outlook (Course 1), how to evaluate and deal with your character's emotional biases in order to suggest them a wealth strategy they will be able to follow (Course 2), how to build an optimal portfolio and manage its risk once the strategy has been designed (Course 3) and how to adequately measure the performance of your plan while taking advantage of investment vehicles and future trends in the investment management industry to further your character's goals (Course 4). This Capstone project was designed in collaboration with UBS, our corporate partner, who benefits from years of experience in guiding clients with their wealth planning.