The Complete Investor Bootcamp

Gather vast data from free sources like Yahoo! Finance, then analyze stock prices, company financials, and related news to gain a competitive edge as a retail investor.

Learn to download analysis-ready historical stock prices from Yahoo! Finance into Excel. Choose the date range and data frequency, and use the adjusted close price for analysis.

Learn to access a company's financials beyond price data by using investor relations pages and SEC filings, downloadable as Excel, and prepare data for analysis.

Explore famous stock indexes: Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, Wilshire 5000, Nasdaq Composite, Nikkei, and MSCI ACWI, and learn how they measure market performance and guide portfolio construction.

Explore how to calculate rates of return by distinguishing asset types, understanding holding period return and total return, and comparing arithmetic and geometric mean returns with compounding.

Learn how to compute variance and standard deviation of returns in Excel, using var and stdev for sample data, and interpret volatility to compare investment risk.

Learn to compute covariance and correlation between Apple and CM's energy in Excel using monthly adjusted close prices; interpret a positive covariance and a 0.19 correlation to assess diversification benefits.

Explore how risk aversion, utility functions, and indifference curves guide portfolio choices by balancing return, risk, and the risk aversion coefficient.

Diversify across asset classes - stocks, bonds, and cash equivalents - to reduce risk and cushion portfolios in downturns. Review performance from small-cap to large-cap stocks and bonds, and the power of compounding.

Distinguish historical from expected returns and assess how skewness, fat tails, and liquidity influence investment risk, before calculating mean, variance, and covariance of asset returns.

Explore the minimum variance frontier and global minimum variance portfolio to understand lowest-risk options for a given return, and how the efficient frontier and capital allocation line guide risk-averse choices.

Build the minimum-variance portfolio and the efficient frontier in Excel using 11 two-stock portfolios. Compute returns and standard deviations, plot the frontier, and identify efficient versus inefficient points.

Construct the capital allocation line by combining the risk-free asset with the optimal risky portfolio, illustrating the two-fund separation, borrowing, and how weights shape return and risk.

Learn how the risk-free asset expands the opportunity set and, with the optimal risky portfolio, defines the capital allocation line and the two-fund separation theorem for tailored risk-return choices.

Explore the capital market line under CAPM, linking the risk-free asset and the market portfolio (e.g., the S&P 500), and illustrate lending, borrowing, and leverage along the market slope.

Differentiate systematic and unsystematic risk, showing that diversification can nearly eliminate unsystematic risk with 25–30 non-correlated stocks, while systematic risk remains unavoidable for all portfolios.

Calculate and interpret beta as a security's market risk relative to the market portfolio, using covariance and variance; identify defensive stocks with beta below 1 and aggressive stocks above 1.

Explore the capital asset pricing model (capm), which states that a security's expected return equals the risk-free rate plus beta times the equity premium, linking return to systematic risk.

Explore how the security market line graphically represents CAPM by plotting beta against expected return, with the risk-free rate on the y-axis and the market risk premium shaping the slope.

Learn how the capital asset pricing model links market risk to expected return, using the risk-free rate, market premium, and beta to price securities and construct portfolios.

Apply the capital asset pricing model to assess risk and return, compare expected versus required returns, and identify overvalued or undervalued stocks using the security market line.

Explore risk-adjusted performance with the Sharpe ratio and the M squared ratio, comparing excess return over the risk-free rate per portfolio's total risk and ranking portfolios against the market.

Compare and interpret portfolio performance using Sharpe, Treynor, M squared, and Jensen's Alpha, distinguishing total versus systematic risk to choose appropriate measures for diversified and non-diversified funds.

Explore debt and equity securities, including bonds with face value and coupons, and equity features like common and preferred stock, voting rights, dividends, and optional convertibility.

Explore private and public equity, including private placements, leveraged buyouts, venture capital, mezzanine funding, and exit options such as IPOs.

Explore non-domestic stocks by comparing direct investing with depository receipts—ADR, GDR, and global registered shares—while examining currency risk, liquidity, and regulatory considerations.

Explore how equity returns include dividends, capital gains, and foreign exchange gains. See how currency movements and reinvested dividends shape risk and total returns across different share types.

Learn how equity financing supports liquidity, going concern, and regulatory compliance while enabling organic growth through asset purchases, research and development, stock option incentives, inorganic growth via mergers and acquisitions.

Compute return on equity (ROE) to gauge how well management uses capital, using net income over average common equity, and compare with price to book ratio for sustainable performance.

Explore industry and company analysis to identify competitive advantages, understand market conditions, and guide stock selection, valuation, and portfolio performance attribution through top-down and sector rotation insights.

Classify companies by products or services, by business cycle sensitivity, and by statistical similarities. Explore examples from the IT sector, media, and utilities, and understand the limits of cluster analysis.

Understand how governmental classification systems organize firms by economic activity with six-digit codes and five aggregation levels. See how manufacturing examples illustrate cross-country consistency and contrast with commercial systems.

Explore how industry concentration shapes pricing power, price coordination, and market share, with examples from Google, Apple, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola, and the roles of differentiation and brand loyalty.

Understand how industry capacity affects pricing power and competition, with capacity fixed short-run and adjustable long-run. Examine examples from airlines, semiconductors, shipping, and firms like Microsoft and Tesla.

Explore the industry lifecycle model, tracing five stages from embryonic to decline and how evolution shapes profitability. Analyze stages to guide investment decisions and competitive strategy.

Explain how saving moves money to the future and borrowing moves money to the present, and define the equilibrium interest rate as the balance of money supplied and demanded.

Classify assets into real, intangible, and financial types—covering securities, derivatives, currencies, and their markets, including spot and forward, primary and secondary, money market and capital market.

Explore major pooled investment vehicles—mutual funds, ETFs, hedge funds, and open end and closed end funds—and learn NAV per share, fund structure, diversification benefits, high watermark, and redemption terms.

Learn how derivative contracts derive value from underlying assets, covering forwards, futures, swaps, options, and credit default swaps, and explore hedging, liquidity, and counterparty risk.

Explore real assets—physical investments like precious metals, commodities, and real estate—and compare direct ownership to REITs or mining stocks, noting unique properties, costs, inflation hedging.

Explore financial intermediaries, from brokers and exchanges to alternative trading systems and custodians, and learn how they match orders, disclose information, and enable IPOs, M&A, and large trades.

Explain how dealers trade on their own account to provide liquidity and profit from spreads, sometimes acting as broker dealers, while securitization pools assets into tranches and securities.

Explore depository institutions like banks and credit unions that raise and lend capital through deposits and loans, earning from the interest rate spread and connecting depositors with borrowers.

Explore how insurance companies manage risk by pooling diversified policyholders and transferring risk through premiums. Understand underwriting policies that address moral hazard, adverse selection, exclusions, and fraud.

Discover how margin accounts create leverage by borrowing cash to buy securities, amplifying both potential profits and losses, while understanding initial and maintenance margin requirements and the broker loan rate.

Calculate the leverage ratio and its inverse relation to initial margin to assess risk and magnified gains, considering margins, dividends, interest, and commissions.

Explore how maintenance margin and initial margin protect brokers from losses, using the formula and an example to show how price moves trigger margin calls for long and short positions.

Explore how initial public offerings work, from pre marketing and book building to underwriting and best effort offerings, including price setting and investor demand.

Explore four primary market options—private placements, shelf registrations, dividend reinvestment plans (drips), and rights offerings—and learn how secondary market liquidity reduces the cost of capital.

Discover how investors get updated about trading opportunities through real-time quotes and orders, the roles of pre-trade and post-trade transparency, and why dealers favor opaque markets with wider bid-ask spreads.

Explore the characteristics of a well-functioning financial system, including complete markets, operational efficiency, and informational efficiency, to enable capital allocation, risk sharing, and liquidity.

Regulators enforce competence standards, curb insider trading, and require reliable financial reporting and minimum capital to protect unsophisticated investors and maintain market liquidity.

Calculate price return and total return index values across multiple periods by geometrically linking period returns, using an inception value and period returns, and illustrate with dividends and multi-period examples.

Learn how to construct and manage an index by defining the target market, selecting securities, assigning weights, and setting rebalancing frequency and review cycles.

Explore price weighting for index construction, its calculation and divisor adjustments, with Dow Jones example, and preview equal weighting, market capitalization weighting, float-adjusted market capitalization weighting, and fundamental weighting methods.

Explore market capitalization weighting, a value weighting method where each stock's weight equals its market cap divided by the index total, highlighting larger firms and momentum implications.

Explore float-adjusted market-cap weighting by defining market float and free float, and learn to compute weights with the formula, using the S&P 500 as a reference.

Learn how a market capitalization weighted (value weighted) index assigns weights by company size, calculates the divisor, price returns, and total returns from a three-stock example.

Learn how an equal-weighted index assigns one third of the index value to each security, calculating holding period, price, and total returns with dividends.

The lecture examines market anomalies challenging the efficient market hypothesis, explains data mining pitfalls, and emphasizes sound statistical methodology and hypothesis testing to identify persistent opportunities and abnormal returns.

Explore time series deviations and calendar anomalies, including the January effect, turn of the month, day-of-week, weekend, and holiday patterns, plus factors like tax loss selling and window dressing.

Explore cross-sectional anomalies with the size and value effects, revealing how small caps produced higher risk-adjusted returns than large firms, and how the Fama–French three-factor model tests these premiums.

Explore rare market anomalies beyond time series and cross-sectional patterns, including closed-end fund discounts, earnings surprises, and IPO underpricing, and assess their profitability.

Explore behavioral finance, examining how loss aversion, overconfidence, information cascades, and herd behavior influence pricing anomalies and market efficiency.