Investments is largely a review of the topics covered in the second year subject, Business Finance. It covers the fundementals of asset pricing models and bond yield calculations. The maths is a bit more advanced than in previous years. The main new topic is creating optimal risky portfolios and using an individual’s risk preference to determine the ideal complete portfolio.
The text book seemed unnecessary. Everything relevant to the course work was online, including detailed lecture slides, tute questions, worked solutions to some questions, and practice tests and exams. I can’t imagine that it would have been worth buying the textbook.
The assessment was made up of two assignments, worth 5% each, a 20% midsemester exam and a 70% 3 hour final exam. The assignments were relatively straight forward, but were easy to make small calculation mistakes. The midsemester exam was multiple choice, but most of the questions required calculation or advanced knowledge. Definitely recommend doing the practice tests.
The lectures were recorded and the lecture notes were all released at the start of the semester. The 9am-11am double lecture on a Monday morning was a bit hard to stay awake in. The lecture notes are detailed and easy to review when answering the tutorial questions.
No tutorial assessment or hurdle. 100% optional. However, the half of the questions on the sheet that were addressed in the tute would not have answers posted online at all, so if you didn’t attend any tutorials, you’d be missing half the answers. Usually they were the harder questions too.
The reviewer rated this subject 8/10.
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Posted Wednesday 13 July, 2011. Updated Wednesday 13 July, 2011.