MSF Course Descriptions

MSFR60100 Financial Accounting (2.0 credits)

This course addresses the accounting process used to measure and report economic events to outside stakeholders. The course focuses on fundamental concepts, required financial statements, and key relationships. The course emphasizes the role of accounting in contracts and in decision-making by investors, creditors, and regulators.

MSFR60400 Finance Fundamentals (2.0 credits)

An in-depth and quantitative examination of the principles of financial decision-making. Students will learn about the financial ecosystem and the concepts of value maximization, mathematics of finance, valuation of financial securities, capital investment evaluation,and the fundamentals of risk and return.

MSFR60600 Investments (2.0 credits)

This course covers the fundamentals of investment theory, including an introduction to asset classes, portfolio theory, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, market efficiency, and portfolio performance evaluation. In addition, it provides an introduction to how secondary markets work to facilitate trading securities.

MSFR60950 Ethics in Finance (1.0 credit)

This course will integrate ethics into business decision making. Students will use case studies, readings, and assignments to evaluate business situations and make ethical decisions.

XXXX65600 Bridge to Success (1.0 credit)

The course is designed to provide MSFR students with the tools to manage their career throughout their lifetime. It not only addresses the planning process necessary to start the job search, but also incorporates specific assistance in such areas as resume writing, interview preparation and skills, networking and other tactics.

MSFR70100 Financial Statement Analysis (2.0 credits)

An in-depth exploration of financial statements from the perspective of a financial decision maker rather than a producer of financial statements. Students will gain the knowledge and skills required by a financial analyst charged with assessing a variety of corporate situations including business combinations, joint ventures, credit analysis, inventory analysis, and managing long term liabilities. Key ratios utilized in credit analysis will be covered as well as peer company analyses.

MSFR70200 Quantitative Methods in Finance I (2.0 credits)

This hybrid (in-person and synchronous online) course provides an overview of traditional quantitative techniques used in empirical analysis. The focus of the course will be on linear and non-linear regression and related analytical tools for use both in characterizing data as well as for forecasting. The course will also cover how these tools and techniques apply to special types of data, such as time series and qualitative data, which present unique challenges. Particular focus will be placed throughout on the practical issues confronting quants when undertaking quantitative analysis.

MSFR70400 Corporate Finance (2.0 credits)

This course provides an introduction to corporate financing and investments decisions. Students will learn about the process of raising capital, including debt financing, leasing, and issuing securities. They will also learn how to estimate a firm’s opportunity cost of capital and use that cost of capital to evaluate capital investment projects and to value firms.

MSFR70620 Derivatives (2.0 credits)

This course provides a sound conceptual framework for the valuation of derivative securities. Students will understand fundamental concepts regarding derivatives. Topics include option pricing models (binomial, Black-Scholes-Merton), options trading strategies, the pricing of futures/forward contracts, futures trading strategies, and swap contract valuation.

Fall Interterm:

XXXX75700 Financial Statement Forecasting (1.0 credit)

MSFR70160 Dynamic Pricing (2.0 credits)

This course presents the conceptual and analytical skills needed to navigate the strategy and tactics of pricing in today’s fast-paced and interconnected marketplace. Students will learn how to price products or services based on measured economic value, strategic interactions with competitors, and dynamic consumer perceptions. Students will apply economic theory to devise complex pricing strategies (e.g., auctions, nonlinear pricing, bundling) that maximize profit, as well as develop dynamic strategies such as surge pricing for dealing with uncertainty around customer valuation and arrival.

MSFR70250 Quantitative Methods in Finance II (2.0 credits)

This hybrid (in-person and synchronous online) course builds on the tools developed in the prior course, with a particular focus on modern quantitative tools. Machine learning – both supervised and unsupervised – will be covered in detail, with an emphasis on applications commonly used in finance. The course will be taught primarily from an intuitive, conceptual perspective, with an emphasis on how the tools work, the problems they are typically applied to in practice, and their strengths and limitations.

MSFR70260 Python for Finance (2.0 credits)

This synchronous fully online course provides students with a working knowledge of the open source programming language Python. The course will teach the essential aspects of coding in Python and then apply the tool to financial applications involving analytics, large datasets, and unstructured data. The objective of the course is to provide students with a better understanding of how computers can be used to solve business problems.

MSFR70420 Capital Allocation (2.0 credits)

An in-depth examination of capital allocation decisions, this course expands on the general concepts of project and firm valuation from the Corporate Finance course. Here students will forecast financial statements, structure M&A deals, and learn alternative valuation techniques for highly-leveraged transactions. They will also consider complex project valuation decisions such as choosing between mutually exclusive projects with unequal lives, setting contract bid prices, and decisions that require real options analysis (e.g., project expansion and abandonment decisions).

MSFR70460 Working Capital Management (2.0 credits)

This course emphasizes the set of decisions and problems that financial and operating managers face in determining short-term financial policy, setting terms when structuring contracts and deals, and managing business processes of the company. Major topics include identifying working capital elements and their relationships to company operations, financial analysis, cash forecasting, banking relations, cash-flow systems, and short-term investment and borrowing strategies.

MSFR70650 Fixed Income (2.0 credits)

The objectives of this course are to describe important fixed income securities and markets, and develop tools for valuing basic fixed income securities and managing interest rate risk. The course covers securities such as coupon bonds, forwards, floating rate notes, swaps and corporate bonds, and includes topics such as yields versus rates of return, the repo market, duration and convexity, hedging by immunization or matching, credit risk, valuation by no arbitrage (i.e., replication).

MSFR70700 Applied Valuation & Modeling I (2.0 credits)

This course provides a detailed understanding of the tools used by market professionals and corporate managers to analyze the value of companies and stocks using discounted cash flow and relative valuation techniques. Students will identify and interpret the key value drivers for a firm or industry, estimate cost of capital and cash flows, develop quantitative models for firm and equity valuation based on DCF and multiples, and present firm and equity valuation analyses in a professional manner.

Spring Interterm:

XXXX75750 Financial Data Visualization (1.0 credit)

Spring (Mod 4):

MSFR70490 Financial Policy/Strategy (2.0 credits)

This course provides a framework for the evaluation of corporate policy and strategic financial decisions. Topics include determining the financial drivers of company performance, economic (shareholder) value added, and the impact of strategic decisions such as pricing, expansion, and working capital changes. Using several case studies, the course will also cover topics such as capital structure, dividend policy, leveraged buyouts, security issuance, spin offs, and private equity sales.

MSFR70670 Advanced Investment Strategies (2.0 credits)

This course introduces students to advanced topics in investments. The building blocks of the course include portfolio theory and factor models, active quantitative investment strategies based on time-series and cross-sectional return predictability, market frictions (transaction costs, liquidity, short-sale constraint, tax, etc.) and major institutional players. Special topics change from one year to another to reflect recent trends and practices in the industry.

MSFR70750 Applied Valuation & Modeling II (2.0 credits)

This course builds on the techniques previously developed and provides a detailed understanding of relative valuation techniques and alternative valuation methodologies. Students will continue to identify and interpret the key value drivers for a firm or industry, estimate cost of capital and cash flows, develop quantitative models for firm and equity valuation based on DCF, multiples, and alternative valuations and present firm and equity valuation analyses in a professional manner.