Everything Finance — Part 1

Warren Buffett, one of the world’s leading value investor is known for reading a minimum of five to six hours a day. Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates, one of the largest hedge funds in the world suggests reading as one of the principal ways for expanding mind. His words are echoed by most of the noteworthy investors and fund managers who have credited reading as being one of the essential factors behind their success.

This article is first in two-part series which will contain a comprehensive list of resources — MOOCs, newsletters, blogs, podcasts, books, and certifications available online, put together by members of Wall Street Club, BITS Goa. Whether you are preparing for an internship or simply want to keep yourself updated, this article will have something for you. In the first article, we cover some of the best virtual experience programs, certifications, MOOCs and newsletters, we have seen so far.

1. Virtual Experience Programs:

Inside Sherpa Citi — Institutional Banking Virtual Internship Program — In the Investment banking program, you will learn how to prepare a company and industry overview, consider M&A rationale, do comparables analysis and DCF valuation.

Inside Sherpa Future IM/Pact — Investment Management Virtual Internship Program — In this Investment management virtual internship program, you will learn about fixed income markets, investment recommendations and various careers, and pathways in the investments.

2. MOOCs:

Yale Financial Markets — Through this course you will learn about using risk management and behavioral finance principles to understand the real-world functioning of securities, insurance, and banking industries. Delivered by Nobel Laureate, Robert Schiller, this course in-depth and broad treatment of the financial industry is unmatched.

Asian Development Institute’s Financial Globalization, Capital Flows, and the Global Financial Cycle — Globalization especially of finance, has been in a lot of discussions lately. This course explores concepts of financial globalization and delves into issues such as why theoretical benefits are not achieved in practice, the factors driving capital flows and the role of the global financial cycle. https://elearning-adbi.org/courses/financial-globalization-capital-flows-global-financial-cycle/

EDHEC Risk Institute’s Investment Management with Python and Machine Learning Specialization — Through a series of 4 MOOCs, this course covers various aspects of portfolio management. Compared to other similar courses, this course makes extensive use of lab modules, and real datasets to explain the concepts in finer detail.

3. Newsletters :

Axios Markets — A quick round of financial news and trends of the day in a concise manner, this newsletter covers topics in a simple yet straight forward manner. https://signup.axios.com/2019/markets.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosmarkets&stream=business

Morning Brew — Compared to Axios, this newspaper focusses more on business news in a brief and fun way. Apart from the financial aspect, this newsletter also covers other parts of the story. https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/r?kid=b8021e32

Finshots — This daily newsletter covers the most important stories of the day in a short and straight forward manner. For those of you, who might feel others are a bit heavy, this newsletter is an excellent place to start. https://finshots.in/

Beyond the first order — As its name suggests, this newsletter goes beyond the immediate or direct consequences to explore the consequences of various events. Unlike other newsletters, this is focussed mainly on India and South East Asia. https://the-ken.com/bfo/?utm_source=su_bnr&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=btfo

For those of you, who might like to read the financial news in greater detail, Matt Levine’s Money Stuff and John Authers’ Points of Return are definitely recommended.

4. Certifications:

CFA Institute Investment Foundations® Program — This certification offered by CFA society covers the basics of finance, various roles in investment and ethics in finance. The free of cost program is totally online and on an average takes 2–3 months to finish.

This post while being comprehensive is by no means exhaustive. For every resource mentioned here, there are hundreds of resources online. While we have tried to filter as much as we can, this list still represents a tremendous amount of information. As such, while it’s useful to read, its also important to develop your own models for understanding.

That’s it for this post. In the next post, we will be curating a list of books, blogs, and podcasts. Stay tuned for updates!