For anyone who might be interested in Finance or in the Finance Track, I want to take this opportunity to share a little about the 1st semester Proseminar and some (by no means all) of the finance classes at Sloan.
Proseminar in Finance (1st Semester) - This is definitely a seminar where you will only get out of it what you want to. If you decide to pout that you have to attend this as a requirement of the finance track and spend the seminars daydreaming you won't get much out of it and will see it as a waste of time. On the other hand, the seminar is designed to introduce you to different areas of finance such as sell side, buy side, investment management....To accomplish this speakers from the industry will come in to talk about their careers and then field questions from the students. For me there were two highlights of this course. The first was when Eric Rosenfeld from LTCM "fame" came to talk about the progression of his career. Here is a clip of him giving another speech before my time at MIT http://techtv.mit.edu/tags/3627-rosenfeld/videos/2450-eric-rosenfeld-15437-presentation-21909 (Also mentions MIT's connection to LTCM)
My other highlight from the semester was when I had the opportunity to have dinner with a Managing Director from State Street. In advance of many of the presentations an email would be sent to participants where you can apply to have dinner with a panelist. Great dinner (Legal Seafood) and some awesome conversation (women in finance, morality in finance...)
Finance I - First semester finance course, prerequisite for pretty much every other finance course. Covers present value, discounting cash flows, bonds, stocks, options (binomial and a little Black Scholes). I prepped for it (I have no finance background) by reading through Bodie-Kane-Marcus "Investments" (also the textbook used for the investments course)
Finance II - More corporate finance based. We have started out by analyzing financial statements to calculate the financing needs of companies and constraints on their growth. One of the strengths of this course is that it is largely case based in which you read a case prior to class and prepare a memo analyzing the problem at hand then discuss the relevant issues in class.
Investments - Covers CAPM in detail, risk factors, portfolio management, market efficiency, and behavioral finance. Expands on many of the ideas in Finance I. (I am not 100% sure what we are doing in this class as I have missed a couple of classes due to out of town interviews. apologies)
Options and Futures Markets - Covers derivatives. Starts with bond math and forward rates. We are moving into swaps next week then will move onto options, futures, and hedging. As an added bonus, this semester the course is being taught by John Cox who is one of the inventors of the binomial options pricing model (if you don't know what this is, trust me, it's a big deal.)
Business Law tilted towards finance - Great course! Begins with some themes of criminal and civil law as it relates to corporations. Case and discussion based. Will then move into some of the legal issues of mergers, acquisitions and the like. If you take nothing else from this class, you will take away the fear of jail time for legal lapses as an executive after reading all the cases. Crime doesn't pay.
Comments