This course aims to help students develop a broad knowledge and understanding of the asset management process and practice. The investment management industry is globally one of the largest and most complex industries, handling transactions in financial assets worth trillions of dollars annually.

Students will have the opportunity to understand practical issues that arise in managing private and institutional client portfolios. The main topics covered include the investment policy statement, practical application of portfolio theory, dominant & efficient portfolios, Markowitz diversification model, portfolio optimization, capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and arbitrage pricing theory (APT), performance measurement, asset allocation and security selection. The course has a very practical emphasis and all methods are applied in a series of class exercises and cases.

On successful completion of the course students will be able to:

• understand the asset management process;
• define client objectives and investment policy;
• apply financial theory to asset management problems;
• measure portfolio return and risk;
• apply portfolio diversification techniques;
• use the capital asset pricing model and the arbitrage pricing theory;
• understand the difference between asset allocation and security selection;
• distinguish between different asset classes; and
• evaluate the performance of portfolios.