Derivatives (Coursera)

After this course, students should have a good knowledge of financial markets, security pricing, arbitrage, interest rates, risk and return. Contents:

1) Definition and classification of financial assets

2) Discrete-time pricing models

3) Continuous-time pricing models

4) Fixed income products

5) Monte Carlo methods for derivative pricing

This course is part of the Financial Markets Specialization.

What you'll learn

- Evaluate the effect of investment strategies on the risk and return of a portfolio

- Evaluate different uses of financial derivatives (e.g., hedging, speculation)

- Evaluate different pricing models to calculate the price of the various financial instruments

- Develop and employ theoretical asset pricing models to price these derivative instruments

Syllabus

Financial assets

By the end of this week you will learn: fixing some notation; describe the pay-off structure of financial assets; evaluate possible usages of derivatives (hedging, speculation).

Discrete time models

By the end of this week, you will understand the replication of a payoff function, state prices and risk neutral probabilities. Additionally, you will learn how to compute option prices in discrete time models.

Continuous time models

By the end of this week, you will learn about stochastic processes and Itô's lemma, financial markets in continuous time, and option pricing in continuous time.

Pricing fixed income products: discrete time & continuous time

By the end of this week, you will learn how to compute the price of fixed income products.

Numerical methods for option pricing

At the end of this week, you will learn numerical computation of option prices.