FIN 573 (Asset Management)

This advanced course will provide you with an opportunity to apply the knowledge you acquired in prerequisite classes to real-life investment decisions. This course applies financial theory to the issues and problems of asset management. In order to understand these issues, we must start with the specific goals, characteristics, and considerations of the asset owners. Asset owners may be individuals (e.g. personal wealth), collective owners (e.g. families or pension funds), charitable endowments and foundations (e.g. KAUST), corporations, and nations (e.g. sovereign wealth funds (SWF)). We characterize the properties of asset returns and risk as well as the nature of various investment strategies to assess how asset management can meet the specific investment objectives and restriction of asset owners. Asset owners usually delegate management of their portfolios to financial intermediaries (a.k.a. managers), which may invest across different classes of assets or specialize in a certain investment style or asset class.