Master's in Finance

This course deals with (1) interpretation of financial statements, (2) evaluation of the alignment between business strategies and financial performance, (3) identification of potential business risks, and (4) comparison of performance of different companies. The course introduces business analysis and valuation techniques and utilizes real world data to help students comprehend financial statement analysis tools. Topics covers financial statement information, tools of financial statement analysis, and forecasting and valuation techniques.

This course takes a practical approach to managing investments. It covers a wide variety of investment vehicles ranging from pure equity and debt offerings to complex derivatives and options. Various investment strategies are presented which are focused on the different fundamental approaches and tactics used by leading investors to achieve their financial goals. The course also focuses on investment styles, including momentum, growth, income, distressed, asset allocation, and vulture investing, to name just a few. Students participate in real time simulation experiences to create viable portfolios of stocks, bonds and other investments; while tracking their performance against the overall market and the class on a weekly basis throughout the course.

This course covers the fundamentals of financial derivatives, including the basic properties and the pricing of futures, options and swaps. It also explores trading and hedging strategies involving financial derivatives. Special topics, such as exotic options and credit derivatives, are explored. The course provides the foundation of financial derivatives and lays the ground for a rigorous risk management course and other advanced quantitative courses, such as stochastic finance.

This is an intermediate/advanced level course that addresses money flows and the cost of credit for major money market institutions, including banks, bank holding companies and the “shadow banking” system. It entails a broad survey of the structure and financial condition of the banking industry. The course provides a theoretical and practical understanding of why these markets exist, who the key players are; how the markets work, the rules governing their operation and how they are evolving. We will spend considerable time in discussing regulation of the financial markets and financial services industry.

This course serves as a second semester sequence in corporate finance. Students enrolling should have a mastery of the topics of covered in Managerial Finance I (EMT 623), including time value of money, capital budgeting, risk adjusted hurdle rates, managerial accounting, and ratio analysis. Among the topics covered in EMT 638 are: leverage on the balance sheet and weighted average cost of capital; bankruptcy, turnarounds, and recapitalizations; international currency hedging; stock options; private equity valuation; mergers and acquisitions; and the issuance of public and private securities.

An introduction to the science of designing statistical models of economic processes. Students will be required to build and estimate a number of models during the term. Topics include: regression theory, statistical difficulties in regression analysis, advanced topics in single-equation regression, models of qualitative choice (such as, probit, logit), and simultaneous equation estimation.

This course is designed to teach students the nature and availability of the financial data available at Stevens. The focus of the course will be on equity, futures, FX, options, swaps, CDS’s, interest rate swaps, etc. They will learn how to use a Bloomberg terminal. As part of the course, the students will be certified in the 4 areas that Bloomberg offers certification. We will cover the Thomson–Reuters Tick history data and basics of using this data. The course also introduces basics of applied statistics. Bloomberg terminal access will be required for any student taking the course on the web.

The goal of this course is to teach our students Excel usage at a high level, including the built-in data tools and formulas, as well as an introduction to programming with VBA – the Visual Basic for Applications language – within Excel. Excel is used everywhere in finance, and VBA allows practitioners to go beyond standard spreadsheet calculation and modeling. The course focuses on advanced topics such as interacting with databases as well as addons and creating macros to perform complex tasks.

In this course, the students will learn the basics of the open source programming language R. The language will be introduced using financial data and applications. Basic statistical knowledge is required to complete the course. The course is designed so that upon completion the students will be able to use R for assignments and research using data particularly in finance.

In this course, the students will learn the basics of SAS programming using financial data and applications. The course provides an introduction to programming, graphics, and data analysis using SAS Software

This course is a primer on Python (language syntax, data structures, basic data processing, Python functions, modules and classes). The remainder of the course covers open source Python tools relevant to solving financial programming problems. The lecture, supporting examples, and practical applications are intertwined. The content will be delivered in a fully equipped financial computing laboratory where the students are immersed in case studies of real-life applications. There will be reading assignments of the corresponding chapters in the textbook and additional materials will be provided.

This course explores advanced techniques in prompt engineering to optimize the performance of large language models (LLMs). Participants will delve into the key elements of designing effective prompts, apply various prompting techniques, and evaluate LLMs for safety and reliability. The course includes hands-on exercises, discussions, and real-world business applications.

Complete at least 3 of the following courses:

FIN 526 - Private Equity and Venture Capital

This course addresses the fundamentals of venture capital, which includes the venture capital industry, the structure of venture capital firms and venture capital investments. It addresses in some detail the relationship between venture risk and return, the cost of venture capital and the valuation of high growth companies. The course covers a variety of valuation methods as well as analysis of company capital structure or “cap tables”.

FIN 530 Investment Banking

The course provides an overview of Investment Banking both from a transactional and regulatory perspective. Students will explore the structure of global markets, players, risks, motives and opportunities that make transactions happen and study lessons learned from remarkably successful stories and spectacular failures. The instructor will provide various case studies to help students understand market dynamics, transaction complexities, governance and approvals, deal sourcing - origination, due diligence, pricing, distribution as well as regulatory compliance and supervision of investment banks.

FIN 648 International Finance

The course covers a sequence of important topics such as the fundamentals of international financial management, the financial environment in which the multinational firm and its managers must function, and foreign exchange management and financial management in a multinational firm. Since the courses specifically addresses the financial management aspect of international business, considerable attentive will be directed to specific issues of international finance such as foreign exchange markets, managing exchange rate risk and various other risk management issues.

FIN 688 Mergers, Acquisitions and Other Corporate Restructuring

This course develops the “architecture and science” of optimal strategic decision-making by building upon the basic corporate financial theory to cases of financial policies like initial public offering, debt issuance, seasoned equity offers. This course analyzes investments decisions like merger and acquisition, and divestitures decisions like spinoffs and carve-outs. corporate bankruptcy and restructuring, and other advanced models of corporate valuation. The classes are structured to maximize the synergy between advanced topics in corporate finance theory and case-based practical applications, providing students with portable, durable and marketable tools for their careers.

FIN 678 - Asset Allocation Practicum

This course provides students hands-on, real experience in managing a portfolio of risk assets in a live (not paper/simulated trading) investment account holding funds that are part of Stevens Institute of Technology’s endowment. The course employs a Global Macro-Strategy Approach, i.e., a focus on overall macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions at the global and regional level driving the expression of investment views through long and short exposures in asset classes such as equities, fixed income, currencies, precious metals, commodities real estate and other asset classes. Investment decisions are made at the asset class level and implemented using Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) that represent exposures to broad asset classes. Applying asset management theories and techniques at the asset class level, students focus on the strategic selection and management of ETFs to achieve specific investment goals. The course emphasizes critical skills as practiced in the asset management industry. Enrollment in this course is by application only. Interested students should speak with the program for additional guidance.

FA 535 - Introduction to Financial Risk Management

IThis course deals with risk management concepts in financial systems. Topics include identifying sources of risk in financial systems, classification of events, probability of undesirable events, risk and uncertainty, risk in games and gambling, risk and insurance, hedging and the use of derivatives, the use of Bayesian analysis to process incomplete information, portfolio beta and diversification, active management of risk/return profile of financial enterprises, propagation of risk, and risk metrics.

And two of the following courses:

FA 590 - Statistical Learning

Introduction to information theory: the thermodynamic approach of Shannon and Brillouin. Data conditioning, model dissection, extrapolation, and other issues in building industrial strength data-driven models. Pattern recognition-based modeling and data mining: theory and algorithmic structure of clustering, classification, feature extraction, Radial Basis Functions, and other data mining techniques. Non-linear data-driven model building through pattern identification and knowledge extraction. Adaptive learning systems and genetic algorithms. Case studies emphasizing financial applications: handling financial, economic, market, and demographic data; and time series analysis and leading indicator identification.

FA 635 - Financial Enterprise Risk Management

This course deals with risk assessment and engineering in financial systems. It covers credit risk, market risk, operational risk, liquidity risk, and model risk. Topics include classical measures of risk such as VaR, methods for monitoring volatilities and correlations, copulas, credit derivatives, the calculation of economic capital, and risk-adjusted return on capital (RAROC). The nature of bank regulation and the Basel II capital requirements for banks are examined. Case studies illustrate risk engineering successes and failures in financial enterprises.

FA 636 - Advanced Risk Analytics

Given the advancement of statistical tools, the course aims to leverage state-of-the-art analytics for financial risk management. The course begins with an overall introduction to risk models such as market, credit, and operational risk. The course then evolves to discuss volatility predictive models using time series analysis and machine learning. It will also discuss multivariate risk systems, copulas, and shrinkage-based techniques for risk assessment. The second half of the course is mostly dedicated to credit risk management. This part of the course will focus on utilizing predictive analytics to develop early warning systems for corporate credit risk. The course will cover recent research articles and statistical computing libraries as part of the learning objectives.

Complete at least 3 of the following courses:

FIN 550 - Financial Planning and Risk Management

This course will review the fundamental principles of financial planning, professional conduct, education planning, risk management and regulation. The course is aligned with the principle knowledge topics evaluated on the CFP Certification Examination. The course introduces you to the financial planning process and teaches you how to work with clients to set goals and assess risk tolerance. Learn how to process and analyze information, construct personal financial statements, develop debt management plans, recommend financing strategies, and understand the basic components of a written comprehensive financial plan. The course also covers the regulatory environment, time value of money, and economic concepts.

FIN 555 - Retirement and Estate Planning

This course introduces students to the principles of retirement and estate planning as well as current issues in these areas. The course is designed to enable students to understand and be conversant with the basic language of retirement and estate planning, and to understand the pertinent provisions of the US Internal Revenue Code related to these topics. The course focuses on training an individuals ability to use this information for making both short-term and long-term planning decisions. The course progresses at a rapid pace and requires students to prepare regularly for each class session instead of waiting until the exams. Topics include retirement planning tools, techniques and plans, estate and gift tax calculation and compliance, estate planning tools and techniques (both pre and post death), probate and non-testamentary disposition of assets, the use and purpose of trusts, family gifting strategies, estate liquidity, business succession planning, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and retirement plan distributions.

FIN 560 - Federal Taxation of Individuals

This course deals with the methods and principles of US Federal income taxation. It is concerned with the history and politics behind the federal income tax laws and regulations, including major emphasis on tax provisions common to all types of taxpayers, particularly individuals. Topics include: tax authority, research, compliance and planning; gross income and exclusions; individual deductions and credits; tax rate schedules and calculation; filing status; investments and property transactions; self-employment income; retirement planning; home ownership and professional ethics.

FIN 565 - Financial Plan Development

This course integrates the different aspects of the financial planning process and demonstrates how to apply this knowledge to the development of a comprehensive financial plan. Students learn how to solve the main problems related to the financial planning process: cash management, debt management, taxation, insurance, retirement, investment, portfolio optimization, and estate planning. At the end of the course, students should be able to construct a plan according to the CFP Board’s Financial Planning Practice Standards and client objectives. The course is appropriate for students who want to become financial planners and especially for those that plan to take the CFP® Certification Examination.

FIN 658 - Wealth Management Principles and Practices

This is a course on the theory and practice of wealth management. It covers the building blocks and fundamental theoretical and practical aspects of investment management and financial planning for individual investors as well as applications that put the former to use by practitioners in the industry. Students will be exposed to some of the information, tools, and analysis available to investment management professionals today.