General Information
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Target Audience
Students who expect to work in finance or who would like to learn to use options and/or futures in personal trading and investing or who somehow have certain interest in derivatives markets. RSM2306 is useful for general audience in terms of personal finance, while serving as a basic course for specialization in Risk Management and Financial Engineering. The course should be feasible to anyone (who has had Finance 1) in the MBA program.
Format
There are 12 weekly sessions (2 hours per session) in the Fall term
Course Mission
The objective is to provide a well-balanced, practically useful introductory course on derivatives. It emphasizes hands-on learning through a group-based project in trading options and futures. This course can be taken alone for general interest in options and futures. Alternatively, it may serve as the first of a three-course sequence in risk management and financial engineering. The coverage provides the basis for the other two courses in this sequence: Advanced Derivatives (RSM2307) and Risk Management and Financial Engineering (RSM2308).
Course Scope
This course covers options, forwards, futures, and swaps. By the end of the course, students will have good knowledge about how these contracts work, how they are used, and how they are priced. They will also gain hands-on experience through a hedge fund project that is oriented to trading derivatives on the platform of Finance-Lab Portfolio Management (StockTrak).
Evaluation and Grade Breakdown
| Component | Weight |
|---|---|
| Assignment 1 (Group) | 5% |
| Assignment 2 (Individual) | 10% |
| Case Presentation (Group) | 10% |
| Hedge Fund Trading Project (Group) | 25% |
| Final Exam (At End of Course) | 50% |
Required Resources
The textbook is “Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives” by John Hull, 11th edition.