MS-FAIM Course Descriptions
First Quarter (Summer)
FAIM 601: Accounting (4 credits)
Accounting concepts and principles that underlie corporate financial statements, including the balance sheet, the income statement, and the cash flow statement.
FAIM 602: Economics (4 credits)
Concepts and analytical techniques from both micro and macro economics, including market structures, fiscal and monetary policy, international trade, international financial markets, spot and forward exchange rates, interest rate parity and purchasing power parity.
Second Quarter (Fall)
FAIM 603: Quantitative Methods in Financial Analysis (4 credits)
Analytical methods for data analysis, including discrete and continuous probability distributions, descriptive statistics, sampling and statistical inference, correlation, simple and multiple linear regression, and time series analysis.
FAIM 604: Corporate Finance (4 credits)
Decision making strategies in the areas of investment and financing, including discounted cash flow analysis, asset valuation using the dividend discount model, free cash flow model and valuation by multiples, capital budgeting, cash flow estimation and risk analysis, the capital asset pricing model, short and long term financing, the cost of capital, and capital structure.
Third Quarter (Winter)
FAIM 605: Financial Statement Analysis (4 credits)
Interpretation and analysis of financial reports, including ratio analysis, the analysis of fixed assets, current assets, income taxes, long-term and short-term liabilities, leases, off-balance sheet assets and liabilities, pensions and benefits, inter-corporate investments, business combinations, multinational operations, and earnings quality.
FAIM 606: Investments and Equity Analysis (4 credits)
Financial markets and instruments, security market indexes, modern portfolio theory and asset pricing models; analysis of the firm's prospects based on forecasts of the economic environment, industrial activity and the business cycle; measures of performance and value added (EVA, MVA, CFROI); valuation for closely held companies, mergers, acquisitions, divestitures; technical analysis; alternative investments such as real estate, venture capital, investment companies, and hedge funds.
Fourth Quarter (Spring)
FAIM 607: Fixed Income Analysis (4 credits)
Valuation and portfolio management techniques for fixed income securities, including the term structure of interest rates, yield spreads, spot rates and forward rates, measurement of interest rate risk using duration and convexity, mortgage-backed securities and prepayment risk, asset backed securities, international bonds, credit analysis.
FAIM 608: Derivative Markets (4 credits)
Valuation of forward contracts, futures, swaps and options; options trading strategies; bonds with embedded options, option adjusted spreads for fixed income securities; options on futures, swaptions.
Fifth Quarter (Summer)
FAIM 609: Financial Engineering and Risk Management (3 credits)
Corporate and portfolio risk management with forward contracts, futures, swaps and options; delta hedging, gamma hedging, vega hedging, dynamic asset allocation; alternative measures of risk, such as VaR; structured securities.
FAIM 610: Portfolio Management (4 credits)
The use of stocks, bonds and derivatives for the creation and management of a portfolio for an individual or an institutional investor within the regulatory environment; pension plan and employee benefit funds; asset allocation; passive and active equity strategies; passive and active bond portfolio management strategies; portfolio immunization; performance measurement and performance attribution.
FAIM 611: Ethics, Professional Standards, and Compliance (1 credit)
Ethical issues, professional standards, and the code of conduct related to investment portfolio management and the private and public sharing of information.
