Professor John Merrick

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	FIN 9793 Advanced Investment Analysis This MBA-level course covers equity securities and investment strategies utilizing them. The course focuses on applied quantitative investment analysis for equity valuation and portfolio construction. We use the trading room’s data resources intensively in this course, including the First Call analyst earnings expectations survey service and various analytical tools from Reuters and Bloomberg. We develop our own Excel spreadsheet models for both company valuation and portfolio construction. We use Excel’s Solver function extensively in this course for portfolio optimization problems. Portfolio selection and performance benchmarking are developed within a general multifactor setting and applied in the context of both the Fama-French three-factor model and Sharpe’s style analysis. Topics will include: • Historical overview of equity market risk and return • Discounted cash flow valuation • Valuation via peer group characteristic multiples • Single factor and multifactor models of equity returns • Portfolio selection strategies • Performance benchmarking This course meets in the Trading Room of the Subotnick Center. Excel worksheets, various Reuters tools, Bloomberg, and special services such as First Call are used intensively throughout this course. Students are required to attend the Subotnick Center’s Reuters I, Reuters II, and Bloomberg workshops early in the semester.