Financial Market Analysis

Source details

Target audience:
- All government officials are welcome to register.
- Particularly well-suited for officials in central banks, ministries of finance, and regulatory agencies who have experience with macroeconomics and are interested in building their expertise in finance.
Qualifications:
- Some familiarity with basic statistics and probability techniques is expected.
- Basic Microsoft Excel skills are required.
- Access to a computer with a reliable Internet connection and a Google Chrome web browser is essential.

Presented by the Institute for Capacity Development.
Introduces fundamentals of financial analysis used by policy makers.
Emphasizes tools to:
- Study characteristics of various financial instruments and their pricing.
- Analyze portfolios of assets.
- Gain familiarity with the basics of risk management.
Designed as preparation for more advanced and policy-oriented IMF courses in financial or macrofinancial areas.
Topics covered include:
- Pricing of fixed-income securities and equity.
- The term structure of interest rates.
- Portfolio allocation and diversification.
- Introduction to risk management.

Upon completion of this course, participants should be able to:

Price a variety of financial assets (money market instruments, bonds, and equities) using the present value (PV) principle.
Measure and compare different yield measures for financial assets.
Construct and estimate a yield curve on the basis of readily available information and use several theories to interpret its behavior.
Relate differences in the valuation of single equities or markets to economic fundamentals.
Construct an optimal portfolio of risky assets using historical return data and assess likely changes in its composition as macroeconomic conditions change.
Assess the market risk of an investment by calculating its value at risk (VaR), stressed VaR, and expected shortfall, and use back-testing to evaluate the accuracy of past VaR.