This paper will discuss certain advanced topics in investment, such as fixed-income securities (including the bond evaluation and the term structure of interest), security analysis (including equity valuation models and financial statement analysis), and derivatives securities (including valuation and trading strategies).

Lectures

The lectures will be delivered on campus (The lecture will be recorded via Panopto and be available on Moodle after the lecture). The students are encouraged to attend the on-campus lectures and use the videos as a tool to review the contents.

To help students’ learning, the lecturer will chunk down the contents of each chapter into multiple sections. Each section will cover one or two specific topics for around 10-20 min long.

Provide quick access to the whys and hows of dealing with the questions in finance. Provide easy-to-understand information, including equations and examples that can be quickly applied to the problems of finance.

The PowerPoint slides are uploaded onto Moodle for students to download before lectures. The slides with notes will also be uploaded to Moodle after each lecture (I hope the slides with notes may save student time in copying my notes, so they can concentrate on understanding the course materials during the lectures).

Tutorials

The tutorials will be scheduled on-campus and online (Please refer to the FINAN302-21B Moodle page for the information). The students are encouraged to attend the scheduled tutorials on campus.

All students should attend one tutorial session each week. These sessions are conducted by tutors who are senior students. Tutorials normally include revision of lecture material and exemplar questions for the tests. The tutors will be available to assist students in completing these tutorial questions and to answer any other questions about the topic.

The PowerPoint slides are uploaded onto Moodle for students to download before the tutorials. The slides with answers will also be uploaded to Moodle after each tutorial.

Extra credit:

The students who select on-campus tutorial sections and attend over 60% of tutorials will receive 5% bonus points for Test I and Test II. For students selecting online tutorials, they need to attend 80% tutorials in order to receive 5% bonus points. To count attendance, the tutors will do roll call at the begging and/or end of tutorials. The design of extra credits is to encourage the students to attend the scheduled tutorials, particularly on-campus tutorials. There would be five (six) tutorials before (after) teaching recess. Extra credits for tutorial attendance before (after) teaching recess will be accounted into Test I (Test II). The maximum mark of Test I and Test II is 100%.

Content/Foundational Skill

Both critical-thinking and problem-solving questions will be included in the assignments and tests.

The critical-thinking questions (i.e., short essay questions) will be evaluated by Communication Skills, Professionalism and Innovation. There is an expectation that students demonstrate academic integrity when they attempt the assignments in this paper. Moreover, referencing academic research articles to answer the questions will be rewarded in terms of marks (But referencing non-academic websites, such as Investopedia, will not have a reward). The design is to motivate students to achieve effective academic reading. The critical-thinking questions also allow for the evaluation of effective academic reading by students as their answers will demonstrate their understanding of the concepts explored in the paper. And the short essay questions require students to demonstrate their business writing ability. For the problem-solving questions (i.e., calculation questions), students are required to show all their workings. These questions require students to perform calculations on data and then to demonstrate their understandings of the numbers calculated, and thus equip students with numeracy skills/using data.

Lecture slides, tutorial resources and related teaching materials will be available in Moodle.

The course has 36 (3 X 12) contact hours (lectures and tutorials). The rest of the 150 hours expected workload in this 15-point paper can be distributed as follows: 20 hours to complete the Assignment, 20 hours to prepare for and attend the Quizzes, 34 hours to prepare for, and attend Test I and 40 hours to prepare for and attend Test II.