Certification in Security Analysis and Portfolio Management

Explore unit two risk and return, including financial, economic, and capital market analysis, the risk and expected return, the risk–return relationship, and portfolio diversification benefits.

Explore the risk-return introduction, defining risk as uncertainty of future returns and showing how higher risk connects to higher potential returns, with real, nominal, and annualized returns.

Analyze financial, economic, and capital market analysis to assess viability, profitability, and security pricing, guiding capital budgeting and portfolio decisions.

Define risk as the probability that the expected return will not materialize due to political, economic, and industrial uncertainties, including systematic market risk and unsystematic firm risk.

Understand how risk and expected return relate, with higher risk requiring higher returns above the risk-free rate. Learn to calculate expected return from weighted outcomes and recognize diversification limits.

The risk-return relationship shows a trade-off where higher risk can yield higher returns, while lower risk yields lower returns, with standard deviations measuring risk and CAPM illustrating the link.

Explore portfolio diversification and risk by understanding correlations to balance higher returns with risk management and reduce unsystematic risk across stocks, bonds, real estate, and cryptocurrency.

Diversification lowers risk by spreading investments across assets with various correlations, ideally negative, improving risk-adjusted returns and stability while noting higher costs and complexity.

Unit three introduction to security analysis covers free cash flow calculations, project valuations, warrant valuations, and the treatment of goodwill, outlining the core topics to be studied.

Explore security analysis as an outsider investor values assets, equity, debt, and hybrids using fundamental, technical, and quantitative methods, informed by public financial statements.

Learn how to calculate free cash flow from operating cash flow by subtracting capital expenditures and adjusting for non-cash items and working capital.

Evaluate projects with discounted cash flow and net present value to compare benefits and costs, using the discount rate, hurdle rate, and IRR.

Warrant valuations explain how warrants let holders buy stock at a fixed strike price. They assess intrinsic value, time value, dilution, and private equity deals.

Define goodwill as a major intangible asset and explain its treatment in balance sheets, including purchase price versus fair value, excess profits approach, and related entries.

Cover fundamental analysis topics, including the introduction, economy and industry analysis, and company analysis, along with economic forecasting, anticipatory surveys, and barometric or Indian approach.

Learn fundamental analysis to identify mispriced securities by evaluating financial statements, external influences, and industry trends, and estimate intrinsic value to guide buy or sell decisions.

Explore efficient market concepts, intrinsic value, and fundamental analysis for assessing securities. Understand how technical analysis relates and why beating the market is unlikely, favoring passive investing.

Assess costs and benefits to determine project viability and guide resource allocation through economic analysis using methods like social cost-benefit analysis, input-output analysis, and economic impact studies.

Develop a systematic investment making process by analyzing sectors and the economy, setting goals and risk tolerance, building and monitoring a diversified portfolio, and rebalancing to optimize risk and returns.

Economic forecasting predicts future conditions using indicators and econometric models. Short-, intermediate-, and long-term horizons guide fiscal and monetary policy, budgeting, and resource planning.

Anticipatory surveys gather expert opinions from government, business, and industry to forecast the economy. They track construction activity, expenditure, inventories, and consumer plans to guide investment timing and industry choices.

Explore how the barometric or Indian approach uses leading, lagging, and coincidental indicators to forecast future economic activity, with parametric methods and time-series analysis.

Define precise relationships between dependent and independent variables using the geometric model building approach. Use three-dimensional computer modeling to capture geometry, materials properties, mass, and tolerances for forecasting and analysis.

Assess economy and industry factors to guide investment decisions using Porter's five forces, SWOT analysis, and the assessment of external and internal factors for a comprehensive industry view.

Explore how industries are classified by reporting agencies and the six-digit coding system, by business cycle and sector (primary to quaternary), and by private, public, joint, and cooperative sectors.

Analyze how cost allocations across raw materials, wages, and overheads affect profitability, focusing on income, expenses, and the income statement to project future performance.

Examine how technology and research drive competitive advantage by improving efficiency, collaboration, and decision making, while addressing obsolescence and improving product quality and pricing.

Explore how to conduct company analysis for investors, covering financial health, products and services, competitive strategy, swot, comps, and the data analytics steps from goal setting to visualization.

Explore unit five equity valuations model in this course, covering the introduction, balance sheet valuations, free cash flow models, free cash flows to equity, and EBITDA calculations.

Explore how equity valuation models determine a company's intrinsic value using present value, multipliers, and asset-based approaches, reflecting tangible and intangible assets and future cash flows.

Analyze balance sheet valuation by linking assets, liabilities, and equity, assess working capital and liquidity, and apply FIFO or LIFO methods to inventories and current assets.

Explore free cash flow models and free cash flow to equity, showing how net income, capital expenditures, working capital, and debt determine cash available to all investors and to equity.

Learn how to compute EBITDA from EBIT by adding depreciation and amortization, or from operating profit plus these items. Use EBITDA for valuation, peer benchmarking, and mergers and acquisitions.

Explore unit six technical analysis introduction and cover basic technical assumptions, technical versus fundamental analysis, neural networks, Dow theory, and technical indicators.

Explore technical analysis as a discipline that uses past market data, price and volume, and technical indicators to identify trends, support and resistance, and short-term trading opportunities.

Technical analysis assumes markets discount everything and prices move in trends, with history repeating due to market psychology. It uses charts and indicators like volume and momentum to identify patterns.

Contrast technical analysis and fundamental analysis to guide long-term investments and short-term trading, balancing intrinsic value and financial statements with indicators like eps, pe, pb, and roe.

Neural networks function as trading systems that forecast stock prices from historical price and volume data, using preprocessing, design and training to uncover buy and sell opportunities.

Explore the Dow theory, the oldest technical analysis tool, detailing primary, secondary, and minor trends, price and volume signals, sector rotations, and the three stages of accumulation, participation, and distribution.

Explore how technical indicators like moving averages, MACD, RSI, and stochastic oscillators use price, volume, and open interest data to forecast price trends, assess market confidence, and guide trading decisions.

Explore the seven efficient market theory and its introduction, outlining the benefits for an efficient market and investor utility as the unit covers key contents.

Explore efficient market theory, where security prices reflect all available information, making beating the market difficult and promoting passive investing in efficient markets.

Explore the benefits of an efficient market and investor utility through the efficient market hypothesis, which posits stock prices reflect all information, limit arbitrage, provide liquidity, and challenge excess returns.

Explore the introduction to unit eight derivatives, covering hedging, key features of futures contracts, and the differences between futures and options.

Explore how derivatives are financial contracts deriving value from underlying assets, traded on exchange or otc, with forwards, futures, swaps, and options for hedging, speculation, and risk management.

Learn hedging as a risk management strategy by offsetting potential losses with opposite positions in futures, credit derivatives, and index put options across bond, credit, and equity portfolios.

Identify features of futures contracts: standardization, margins, clearinghouse risk mitigation, time spreads, expiry and settlement, contract size, and organized exchanges enabling liquidity.

Discover how futures contracts use long and short positions, daily settlement, and delivery or offset mechanisms to hedge against price movements, and distinguish them from forward contracts and options.

Compare futures and options, focusing on obligations versus rights, exchange trading, margin, and the differing risk-reward and payoff profiles for hedging and speculation.

Explore portfolio management, turning goals into a strategy, and discuss risk reward concept, the investment risk pyramid, and value investing as core topics for unit nine.

Portfolio management selects and oversees investments to meet clients' long-term goals and risk tolerance, covering aggressive, conservative, income, speculative, and hybrid portfolios and the decision process.

Turn goals into a strategy by breaking them down into an action plan, using visualizations and accountability, and guiding asset allocations to balance risk and return for a comfortable retirement.

Understand the risk-reward concept and the risk-return trade-off, where higher risk promises higher potential return and greater uncertainty. Learn to measure potential profit versus risk to evaluate investments.

The investment risk pyramid guides asset allocation by risk level, from low-risk base assets to high-risk summit, balancing stability, growth, and capital protection.

Value investing buys stocks below intrinsic or book value, seeking undervalued assets with stable earnings. It suits defensive investors through strategies like dollar-cost averaging and reinvested dividends, per Benjamin Graham.

Explore the introduction of unit ten portfolio analysis and identify inputs to portfolio analysis for a solid foundation.

Learn how to analyze portfolios by evaluating asset collections, measuring performance, risk, and returns, and aligning allocations with risk tolerance and investment goals.

Explore inputs to portfolio analysis, including future return and risk estimates, asset allocation, and performance measures like Sharpe ratio, alpha, tracking error, and qualitative factors.