FIN 478: Advanced Financial Analysis

Textbook Information

  • Material: Schweser (www.schweser.com) premium package (discounted for CFA scholarship recipients) which includes the weekly online course
  • This material referenced above is not a typical textbook. It is online study materials to help students prepare to take the CFA exam.

Published Remarks

Please contact Dr. Greg Filbeck at mgf11@psu.edu if you are interested in registering for this course.

Hardware Requirements

  • None

Software Requirements

  • None

Proctored Exams

  • One synchronous session is dedicated to students taking a mock CFA exam at the end of the course. Other weekly synchronous sessions are conducted throughout the course for material discussion.

Course Description

This seminar course covers the investment tools necessary to prepare junior professionals in the investment management industry. Students are exposed to economic foundations that underpin financial statement analysis, corporate finance, and portfolio management. The course focuses on advanced applications in traditional asset classes (such as equity and fixed income investments) and alternative investments (such as private equity and hedge funds).

Grading scale:
Class Discussion Lead           25 percent
Class Discussion Questions   40 percent
Class Participation                  25 percent
Mock Quiz                               10 percent
Grades will be assigned based on a 10-point scale.  The instructor reserves the right to expand these ranges as necessary.

Class Discussion Lead: Each member of the course is responsible for serving as discussion lead potentially multiple times (depends on class size). The discussion lead is responsible for presenting/leading a 20-30 minute discussion of the most important topics covered assigned for that class period. Assigned individuals will also create a quiz based on 20 q bank questions for classmates and facilitate a review session for those questions. If a student will be missing a class for a given week, his/her class discussion questions will need to be sent to me via email (scanned) no later than the start time of class. The discussion lead will distribute powerpoint presentation for the class, q-bank questions, and q-bank answers immediately prior to class.

Class Discussion Questions:  Prior to the start of each weekly class, each member of the course should send in documentation showing comprehensive completion of all module quiz questions covered by that week’s class. Weekly grades will be assigned as 100 (comprehensive effort), 50 (partial effort) or 0 (no effort)

Class Participation: All students are expected to attend each class session. Each class period, a class participation grade will be assigned based on attendance/participation.  Attending and contributing to class discussion will result in an award of 100 points for that class meeting. Once we move to practice exams, each student will send me an email prior to our regularly scheduled class time (we will discontinue meetings after week 10), with a comprehensive analysis of the practice exam(s) they took that week including overall performance, two weakest areas and efforts made to short up the two weakest areas. Thus, a total of 15 participation grades will be taken – I will take the highest 13.  Failure to attend/email results in an assignment of ‘zero” for that week.

Mock Exam: A mock exam will be administered in the last class period.  A score of higher than 50 percent or higher will receive an “A,” 40 to 50 percent a “B,” below 40 percent, a “C.”