Investment and Portfolio Management Specialization

Build a Winning Investment Portfolio. Improve your investment strategies with real-world skills, insights, and analytical tools.

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Upcoming Start Date

Enrollment is always open, begin anytime.

Length

Approximately 2 months, 5 courses

Effort

Approximately 5 hours/week

Tuition

Audit for free, or pay $49 per course, or pay $59/month subscription to access more practice and earn a certificate.

Learn more about Coursera subscription options.

Overview

In this four-course Specialization, you’ll learn the essential skills of portfolio management and personal investing.

All investors – from the largest wealth funds to the smallest individual investors – share common issues in investing: how to meet their liabilities, how to decide where to invest, and how much risk to take on. In this Specialization, you will learn how to think about, discuss, and formulate solutions to these investment questions. You will learn the theory and the real-world skills necessary to design, execute, and evaluate investment proposals that meet financial objectives. You will begin with an overview of global financial markets and instruments that characterize the investment opportunities available to today’s investor. You will then learn how to construct optimal portfolios that manage risk effectively, and how to capitalize on understanding behavioral biases and irrational behavior in financial markets. You will learn the best practices in portfolio management and performance evaluation as well as current investment strategies. By the end of your Capstone Project, you will have mastered the analytical tools, quantitative skills, and practical knowledge necessary for long-term investment management success.

To see an overview video for this Specialization, click here!

Who Should Attend

Individuals interested in improving their personal investing skills or beginners to intermediate investors who want to understand how to build and manage their own portfolios.
Professionals in business or finance seeking stronger foundations in investment theory, portfolio construction, and performance evaluation.
Professionals preparing for roles such as investment analyst, wealth advisor, or asset manager.
Individuals who may work with pensions, endowments, treasury teams, or non profit investment committees who need to understand risk, portfolio design and evaluation.
Individuals who want structured, practical knowledge of how markets work and how decisions are made by both institutional and individual investors.

Program Takeaways

Identify major global financial markets and the investment instruments available to modern investors and explain how they function within the broader investment landscape.
Apply foundational principles of risk and return to construct diversified investment portfolios.
Analyze behavioral biases that influence investor decision-making and lead to market inefficiencies.
Assess the performance of investment strategies using industry-standard evaluation metrics.
Formulate investment proposals that align with financial objectives, risk tolerance, and market conditions.
Integrate theoretical and quantitative skills to solve a real-world investment management problem.
Produce a comprehensive investment analysis demonstrating mastery of long-term portfolio management concepts.

Course Curriculum

Global Financial Markets and Instruments

Introduction & Review of Elementary Finance Tools
Financial system & financial assets: fixed income securities
Financial system & financial assets: equity securities and derivatives
Organization of financial markets and securities trading

Portfolio Selection and Risk Management

Introduction & Risk and Return
Portfolio construction and diversification
Mean-variance preferences
Optimal capital allocation and portfolio choice
Equilibrium asset pricing models

Biases and Portfolio Selection

Efficient markets hypothesis and limits of arbitrage
Biases and realistic preferences
Inefficient markets
Applications: Investor behavior

Investment Strategies and Portfolio Analysis

Performance measurement and benchmarking
Active vs. passive investing: Risk-adjusted return measures
Performance evaluation: Style analysis and performance attribution

Capstone: Build a Winning Investment Portfolio

Developing and managing your own simulated investment portfolio, resulting in a peer-graded report covering portfolio strategy, analysis, and performance
Advising case study clients on a variety of investment topics, essentially acting as an investment advisor in a simulated environment recommending strategies for and changes in portfolios based on challenges and issues faced by your clients
Using the sophisticated web-based analytical tools of Silicon Cloud Technologies LLC’s Portfolio Visualizer including portfolio mean variance optimization, historical and forecasted efficient frontiers, Fama-French factor models, and many more