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Section: 5278 |
Instructor: Jason Karceski |
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Lecture period: 7-8 T Th |
Office: 303E Stuzin Hall |
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Lecture room: Stuzin 104 |
Office hours: 12:40 - 1:40 PM, M W |
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FAX: 392-0301 |
Office telephone: 846-1059 |
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Secretary: 392-0153 (321 Stuzin) |
Home telephone: 336-0886 |
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Final exam time: Th, Mar 1, 1:55-3:50 PM in Stuzin 104 |
Email: jason.karceski@cba.ufl.edu |
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Class website: http://bear.cba.ufl.edu/karceski/fin6526/index.html |
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Course Overview and Objectives
FIN 6526 provides an in-depth discussion of
the theory and the real-world practice of investing in stocks. The
course centers on personal
financial decisions related to picking stocks and/or equity mutual funds. With the general
trend towards defined contribution pension plans in the U.S., most of us will be forced to
choose from an array of investments including stocks, bonds, money market funds, and
mutual funds. As we move through the material in this course, it’s a good idea to ask
yourself, "How would what we’re talking about in class affect my real-world
investment portfolio?"
It is important to be skeptical about investment advice that you read in the popular press. There’s a litany of gurus and investment strategies out there with lots of people trying to make commissions off your investment dollars. Consequently, one ancillary goal of this course is that you be able to understand and critically evaluate investment advice from brokers and the financial press. For this class, students will read a lot of articles from the financial press--sometimes in class, but mostly outside of class.
In this class, we will talk about the basics of risk
and return, utility theory, portfolio theory, the benefits of diversification,
the mean-variance efficient frontier, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM),
the arbitrage pricing model (APT), the Fama-French 3-factor model, and market
efficiency. We will also talk about successful investment strategies of
world-renowned investors, mutual funds, hedge funds, the crash of LTCM, security
analysts, insider trading, and behavioral finance.
Recommended Textbook and Materials
Class attendance will not be taken and is not required. However, some of the exam and homework questions will come directly from in-class discussions. You should get class notes from one of the other students if you miss class.
Lecture Notes
I will post lecture notes for the course online before each class.
These notes act as a
general guide to our in-class discussions, but are intentionally incomplete. There are things that we will
talk about in class that are not in the lecture notes and that will show up on exams.
Solutions to Old Homeworks, Quizzes, Projects and Exams
I have provided solutions sets to old quizzes, homeworks, and exams of my
undergraduate investments class for the last three semesters. Some of the
homework and exam questions for our class will be
very similar to the old versions that you have been provided--I highly recommend that you
study this material.
Press Clippings
In a few of our classes, I will hand out an article and ask you to read
it during the break. We will
usually discuss these right after the break, and I encourage you to pay attention to these
digressions. When you read these articles, try to apply some of the concepts that we cover
in class to these real-world situations.
Videos
Most of our classes will include watching a video that is usually between 5 and 15
minutes long. We will discuss the video afterwards. Material covered
during the videos and subsequent discussions are fair game on the final exam.
The Wall Street Journal
The course website
includes a WSJ page that contains articles from
The Wall Street
Journal and other publications (Fortune, Forbes,
The Economist, The Motley Fool, MSNBC, Pension & Investments,
etc.), as well as an indication of how much of the article should be read (e.g.
all of the article, only the first five paragraphs, etc.). Students are
responsible for reading these articles on a real-time basis (in other words, do
your best to keep up). At least for the WSJ, on most days I should have
the articles of the current day's paper available by noon. To give credit
for reading these articles, we will have three in-class "current
events" quizzes during the module.
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Grading Component |
Weight |
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Homework (1 of them) |
20% |
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Current events quizzes (3 of them) |
20% |
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Book summary |
20% |
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Final exam |
40% |
There is a grade look-up page on the web that reports student scores on each of the grade components above. In computing grades, I grade each of the four components on a 5-point scale, and then I take the weighted average of the the four components to get the overall course score. The course will be curved to be approximately 3.5. This means that roughly 33% of the students will get an A, 33% will get a B+, and 33% will get a B. Since the course grades are curved, to get an A in the course, a student needs to be in the top third of the class by overall score. If a student receives a failing grade on 50% of the course, as given in the table above, then they will receive either a C, D, or E for the course.
Homework: The purpose of homework is to prepare students for the exam by providing information about both format and content. In this class, students are expected to figure out the solutions to the homework by themselves, so I will answer only clarifying questions for the homework. Each student is permitted to work with one other student on the homework if they wish, or a student can work alone on the homework. For students that decide to work in pairs, you should turn in only one homework solution set with both of your names at the top of the first page. No outside help from any other student, faculty, or any other person is permitted. Students are permitted to look at solutions sets of old homeworks and exams that are available on the course website. Late homework will not be accepted unless you make prior arrangements with me at least one week before the due date.
Current Events Quizzes: The purpose of these quizzes is to reward students for carefully reading and understanding the articles provided on the WSJ page on the course website. Reading the financial press is important preparation for job interviews and to understand how class material applies in the real world. We take three current events quizzes during the module, and I will take the average of the three scores to compute each student's current events quiz grade. Quizzes are given at the beginning of class and generally last 5 to 10 minutes. There aren't make-up quizzes, so pay close attention to the dates that we will be taking the quizzes. We'll talk about the specific material covered by each quiz as we get closer to their respective dates, but you can find out the material covered by each quiz by clicking here.
Book summary: This project involves creating an 8- to 12-minute video file about an investment-related book that students will select. Summaries will be ranked by two outside evaluators (both of these evaluators are former UF undergraduate finance students) in two dimensions--how much they learned from the video and how entertaining (non-boring) the video is. The two scores will be averaged, and the book summary grades will be graded as 33% As, 33% B+s, and 33% Bs as long as all videos are reasonable. For really bad videos, I reserve the right to assign a lower grade from C to E.
Students are permitted to work on these projects in pairs if they wish. Students will rank the books that they would like to summarize on the second day of class, and then books will be assigned to each student group. Any project that is shorter than 8-minutes or longer than 12-minutes is not eligible to receive a grade higher than a B. Late projects are not eligible to receive a grade higher than a B as well.
Students can request to summarize any book they wish. The "finance links" link on the class website provides a list of more than 20 books that students can choose from. I would suggest that students look at the summary of the books they request to summarize on Amazon.com or some other website to make sure that the books are interesting. It will be difficult to receive a high grade on "interestingness" if the book that a student chooses is inherently uninteresting.
Exam: We will have one final exam that will cover all of the material that we cover in the class. This material includes all of the math/theory as well as any of the videos that we watched in class, or any other discussion that we had in class. The exam will also cover the book summaries that I post on the class website in the week before the exam. All students must take the final exam at the date and time that is at the top of this syllabus.
You can request a regrade of your exam during the one-week period after the respective exam date (after that week, no regrades will be considered). Please note that I will regrade the entire exam, and your score may increase OR decrease as a result of the regrade.
Students with disabilities who require special classroom accommodations must first register with the Dean of Students Office. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student who must then provide this documentation to the Instructor when requesting accommodations.
Contacting the Professor
Click here
for information about how to get in touch with me. Please feel free to
come by during my office hours. That’s your time, and students will get my
undivided attention (if anybody ever shows up). Outside of office hours, please
call or send an e-mail to me a few days beforehand to set up an appointment to
see me.
Format of the Class and Suggestions
To do well on the exams, I give the following advice. A good portion of exam questions will be mathematical problems. Your best indication of exam problems will be from your homework assignment. When going through old solutions, it is very important to solve all of the mathematical problems by yourself (without looking at the answer sheet). If you can solve all of the old homework and exam problems, you should do well on the mathematical part of the exams. Some exam questions will be conceptual in nature. For these, class discussions and class notes are the best indicators.
Contents written by Jason Karceski
Last modified on
January 08, 2007.
