| Semester 3, 2022 Online | |
| Units : | 1 |
| Faculty or Section : | Faculty of Business, Education, Law and Arts |
| School or Department : | School of Business |
| Grading basis : | Graded |
| Course fee schedule : | /current-students/administration/fees/fee-schedules |
Staffing
Examiner:
Requisites
Pre-requisite: FIN1101 and FIN1103 and (STA2300 or STA1003)
Overview
Increasingly, workers are responsible for their own saving and investing, usually through a superannuation fund. More generally, funds management is a large and growing part of the financial services sector. This course is designed to provide students with an introduction to the concepts and tools of modern portfolio management that are applied in this sector and may be applied by individuals taking responsibility for the management of their own savings. The course assumes some knowledge of finance and statistics.
The current trend in the funds management industry is away from security analysis (stock picking) and towards asset allocation (managing the balance of equities, bonds, cash etc). The latter, typically called portfolio management, is now more important than the former, typically called investment management. Portfolio management is important to both individuals who manage their own personal assets and managers who manage the assets of others. This course aims to cover the most crucial aspects of portfolio management. Coverage includes these topics: the construction of the portfolio, investment objectives and policies; the management of the portfolio including the selection of assets, the utilisation of modern portfolio methods and the revision of the portfolio; and the protection of the portfolio using derivatives. The course emphasises the analytical aspects of portfolio management and the decision making process to enable students to apply the established theories and models in the financial world.
Course learning outcomes
On successful completion of this course, students should be able to:
- explicate the process of portfolio construction, management and protection;
- interpret and analyse data with professional literacy skills including numeracy;
- apply knowledge of how investments such as international securities, real assets and derivatives fit into a well-diversified portfolio;
- synthesise theory and practice to solve problems, to make ethical decisions and to think critically in the context of portfolio management;
- use initiative, creativity and judgement to construct, manage and protect a portfolio of financial investments;
- evaluate the performance of a portfolio.
Topics
| Description | Weighting(%) | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Ethics in finance | 10.00 |
| 2. | Portfolio objectives and investment policy | 5.00 |
| 3. | Portfolio diversification | 20.00 |
| 4. | International diversification | 10.00 |
| 5. | Equities | 10.00 |
| 6. | Bonds | 10.00 |
| 7. | Real assets | 5.00 |
| 8. | Revising and rebalancing the equity and bond portfolios | 10.00 |
| 9. | Using derivatives in the portfolio | 10.00 |
| 10. | Performance evaluation | 5.00 |
| 11. | Issues in modern portfolio management | 5.00 |
Text and materials required to be purchased or accessed
Student workload expectations
To do well in this subject, students are expected to commit approximately 10 hours per week including class contact hours, independent study, and all assessment tasks. If you are undertaking additional activities, which may include placements and residential schools, the weekly workload hours may vary.
Assessment details
| Description | Group Assessment |
Weighting (%) | Course learning outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quiz 1 | No | 25 | 1,2 |
| Quiz 2 | No | 25 | 1,2 |
| Time limited online examinatn | No | 50 | 3,4,5,6 |