Teaching
SPECIAL FEATURES OFFERED BY THE FINANCE DEPARTMENT
Early Finance Option
 We
offer students who are seeking finance-related careers the option to start
their finance course work in the first half-semester (starting in September)
of their first year. While the finance core is offered in the second half-semester
(starting in November) of their first year, students who are able to waive
one of the early core courses can take a finance elective in the first
half-semester in lieu of the finance core. For students who are unable
to waive any of the early core courses, we offer an accounting course
before school starts. Those who pass this course can waive the accounting
core course and instead take the finance elective. This arrangement makes
our students competitive in the finance job market by enabling them to
take more finance electives before internship interviews.
Tozzi Finance Center
The John
R. and Georgene M. Tozzi Electronic Business and Finance Center at
the Ross School of Business is a state of the art trading room that hosts
several MBA courses and software training sessions each semester. The
Center provides access to a number of specialized software and data services,
including Factset, Bloomberg, Barra, and eSignal. Using the tools available
in the Tozzi center, Ross students have successfully managed a portion
of the University’s endowment since 2000. Students also participate
in a variety of trading simulations in the center.
Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance
 The
Center
for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance, part of the Samuel
Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, presents
the Michigan Growth
Capital Symposium each spring. The conference continues to be the
Midwest's leading conference where hundreds of cutting-edge technology
entrepreneurs and the best venture capitalists in the region and nationwide
make invaluable connections. A carefully screened group of companies,
representing industries ranging from information technology, life sciences,
alternative energy and nanotechnology, present for an audience of venture
capitalists, angel investors and institutional investors.
RSB Student Managed Fund
Ross students get hands-on experience with the RSB Student
Managed Fund, a portion of the University’s endowment. Student's
manage the fund as part of the requirement for a 3-credit, second-year
MBA elective FIN 725. We also provide first-year MBA students
exposure to portfolio management through a 0.75-credit course (FIN 525)
that requires them to make presentations to pitch stocks for the fund.
UM/ULI Real Estate Forum
The UM/ULI
Real Estate Forum is a joint effort by the University of Michigan
and the Urban Land Institute. The Forum is dedicated to enhancing real
estate education both professionally and on the university level and conducts
annual symposium on real estate and urban planning issues.
Financial Engineering Program
Ross School, in collaboration with Industrial Engineering and Mathematics
departments, offers a
Masters
in Financial Engineering Degree.
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Action-Based Learning
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FIN 525: Introduction to Portfolio Management -
This course offers a brief introduction to the methods
and tools of quantitative portfolio management. The course
discusses stock screening, relative valuation, and catalytic analysis.
At the end of the course, students present trading recommendations for
the RSB Student Managed Fund. This course is an introduction to
the material covered in the follow up course, Accounting/Finance 725.
It is designed primarily for first year MBA students. Second year
students interested in this material are encouraged to take Acc/Fin 725.
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FIN
629: Financing Research Commercialization – A practicum, offering
an opportunity to apply collective team work of a student/mentor alliance
to building a launch pad for a technology-based venture. Student teams
will work with mentors and principal investigators from UM faculty in
the Medical School, College of Engineering and other divisions to build
a business and marketing plan for a new technology or invention.
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 FIN
640: Financial Trading – The course is intended for MBA students
that expect to take trading jobs, but it is also relevant for all students
that expect to trade securities frequently. The course uses trading
simulations/games conducted on the UMBS trading floor to make students
comfortable with ideas like order type, bid-ask spread, information,
and dynamic hedging. The class will also take a field trip to Chicago
to visit a number of relevant sites.
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FIN
725: Applied Financial Analysis and Portfolio Management – This course is conducted in the Tozzi Finance Center and requires students
to manage a real investment fund. The emphasis is on combining the skills
acquired in traditional courses with the latest financial technology
to develop effective strategies for active portfolio management.
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FIN
743: Advanced Fundamental Equity Security Analysis – Provides
hands-on exposure to fundamental equity analysis of both individual
securities and business sectors. Teaches students to find and convert
relevant data into quantitative model variables to create recommendations
about the stocks to trade and to predict when certain industries tend
to outperform or underperform the S&P 500.
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New
Electives
-
 FIN
340: Financial Trading – This course
is about how people trade in
financial trading and how markets function. It uses both trading
simulations and lectures to illustrate concepts such as order types,
market clearing, information-based trading, liquidity and price
manipulation. The course is designed for students that may take sales
and trading jobs, but is relevant for all students that may trades
securities in the future.
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FIN
380: Options and Futures in Financial Decision Making –This course
addresses futures, options, and other financial derivatives. Students
will develop a framework for analyzing and using these instruments in
financial decision making. First, the characteristics of individual
derivative securities and their markets will be examined. Second,
students will study the fundamental economic principles for the pricing
and hedging of these derivative securities. Finally, the applications of
derivatives securities in different areas of finance will be discussed.
These include hedging and risk management, portfolio insurance, index
arbitrage, and corporate finance. The teaching will be done through
lecture, case presentations, and discussions of major disasters in
derivative applications and current market conditions in different
derivative markets.
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FIN
450: Alternative Investments – This course is designed to provide
basic understanding of the sources and uses of capital managed by hedge
funds. The course will cover the steps to organize and create a hedge
fund, various strategies employed by funds to generate returns, risk
management theory and the performance measurement techniques used by
funds. The course will also discuss current media reports and events
related to the sector and attempt to analyze successes and failures.
This course is designed for action-based learning. All instructions will
be done in the Tozzi center. Students will be required to use Bloomberg,
FactSet, and Barra to obtain data and test various hedge fund
strategies. Student-groups will be responsible for coming up with a
business plan of establishing a hedge fund. The plan should contain
discussions of investment philosophy/strategy, operations, and
marketing/client relationship issues. Each group will present their plan
in front of potential investors at the end of class.
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FIN
743: Advanced Fundamental Equity Security Analysis – Provides
hands-on exposure to fundamental equity analysis of both individual
securities and business sectors. Teaches students to find and convert
relevant data into quantitative model variables to create recommendations
about the stocks to trade and to predict when certain industries tend
to outperform or underperform the S&P 500.
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Finance Student Clubs and Organizations
Finance faculty members are actively involved in advising several clubs,
offering talks on relevant topics, and organizing outside speakers for
club events.
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