Uni/TAFE Courses in Finance

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  bargainbot12 on 06/07/2014 - 17:56

  ozbargain will be your god!

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  scrimshaw on 06/07/2014 - 17:59

  Coursera has an introduction to finance (curriculum from Uni of Michigan)

  https://www.coursera.org/course/introfinance

  since it is free, why not skim through it and see if it's relevant to you.

  studying full-time at Monash, in a degree that is not related to Commerce/Finance,

  Have you perhaps gone to the Monash careers counsellor and consulted with people who teach finance? Go and make an appointment with a lecturer and they might be able to give you some info.

  If you have electives, you could probably spend one or two of them on finance related stuff. Carefully think it over though and see if there are better subjects you could invest your time into.

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  p1 ama on 06/07/2014 - 18:04

  Best bet is to take a couple of electives at Monash - check out BFC2140 and BFC2000, neither require any pre-requisites. Both are pretty much the cornerstone finance subjects.

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  mskeggs on 06/07/2014 - 18:12

  Tertiary finance courses will be largely about the mechanics of understanding an investment, calculating future value etc. Useful, but unlikely on their own to help you much with knowing where to invest.
  In this situation, I reckon the cheapest/easiest way to upskill is get a subscription to Money magazine or read the newspaper personal finance sections.
  These are up to date, try to be interesting, and are pitched at a pretty low skill audience.
  If you have done this and want to go further, then by all means a finance course might be a useful step, but I would suggest maybe a financial planning course rather than corporate finance? Something like: http://www.seeklearning.com.au/finance-courses/diploma-finan…

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    p1 ama on 06/07/2014 - 18:51

    I agree and disagree with you here.

    I agree in that tertiary finance courses won't be "worth it" if you simply want to invest and that there are better ways of getting the knowledge more quickly.

    However, I disagree in saying that tertiary finance course won't help you know where to invest. Even though the university courses won't say "invest here" and "invest there" the way Money magazine would, what tertiary finance courses help you with is to understand investments, which is a very, very important step to being better than other people.

    If you want to invest, then your best bet is to always just follow a market index such as the ASX200 or put your money in a fund.

    If you want to "trade", i.e. if you want to beat the markets, you need to understand things that only a university finance course will be able to teach you. If you want to beat the market, you are essentially winning at other's expense, thus, you really need to understand the markets better than the other players and more often than not, other players are very educated themselves.

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      mskeggs on 06/07/2014 - 20:09

      If you want to invest, then your best bet is to always just follow a market index such as the ASX200 or put your money in a fund.

      WUT?

      I know from your previous posts that you have a pretty sophisticated financial understanding. Investing in an index fund is pretty much the antithesis of what the poster is requesting. They are asking for education on investments and how to evaluate them.
      A uni finance course would help with the evaluation part, granted, but is far from the essence of the request.

      As for trading, except for some esoteric quantitative analysis where you are arbitraging derivatives, then a uni level finance course is of limited use for trading.

      Consider the primary financial products:
      - equities
      - fixed interest
      - futures & forex
      - real estate, commercial/residential
      - private business investment

      and then the way to maximise the returns via tax effectiveness etc:
      - super
      - partnerships
      - company
      - trusts
      - insurance

      Then all these things have a big sensitivity to the investment return, more so than finding an option that is mispriced by 0.05% according to a Black-Scholes price model.

      I think the post is seeking generalist knowledge to get a good investment result, not specialist information applicable only in a limited set of investments in certain circumstances.

      That said, yes, an index fund is a fine way to get equities exposure, and a suitable investment for people who don't want to spend lots of time on their investments.

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        p1 ama on 07/07/2014 - 09:52

        I always find it a little hard to advise people about finance, even though I like to. This is just because individual investors and the decisions they take are completely different to what happens on trading floors.

        Firstly, the only real trading strategy that personal investors can get into is the "buy and hold" strategy, where you buy stocks that you think are underpriced and then sell them when they are no longer underpriced.

        All of the other strategies, such as bond arbitrage, convergence trades, hedging…etc. are all inaccessible to most personal investors because most simply don't have the capital to be investing in derivative markets. I say most because I'm sure there are those who do, but most don't. Also, a lack of access to cheap debt also hampers the ability to leverage returns.

        On top of all that, the cost of brokerage fees almost makes "day trading" impossible. CommSec charges $20 per trade, which means that unless you're trading ridiculous amounts, i.e. hundreds of thousands, you simply cannot make healthy gains if you are making trades daily, because the brokerage will take away 1% of your return.

        So that's why I always recommend index funds. In general, though the buy and hold strategy is successful for some, there's no strong evidence that mutual funds (managed funds) actually perform better than the market index over a longer period of time.

        This makes sense. We're both finance literate, so we know that in perfect capital markets, there's no such thing as picking stocks, because all stocks are "correctly priced", thus, the only portfolio a rational investor would hold is the market portfolio. So by picking stocks and hoping to be successful, we are trying to gain an advantage through inefficiencies.

        In order to exploit these inefficiencies, what we must have is an informational advantage over most other investors, e.g. investing heavily in an industry we know a lot about. If we have no informational advantage, we are actually at a disadvantage by trying to pick stocks compared to investing in an index.

        At the end of the day though, whilst techniques such as picking stocks that are underpriced are good in theory, I do wonder whether we will actually beat the market index in the long run.

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        mskeggs on 07/07/2014 - 14:51

        @paulsterio:

        Agreed. I found some of this out the hard way. I know quite a bit about a couple of market sectors. I have had good success in identifying the stocks in those that will perform best. Unfortunately, you can consistently do that, but under perform the market if you are not exposed to the companies showing big increases.
        Recently, this has been banks and blue chip dividend paying industrials, stocks that are mega-analysed and offer virtually no opportunity for the small investor to uncover some element the rest of the market overlooked.
        By definition, an index fund would have been heavily invested in these stocks, while my investments, in small caps and resources performed OK, but not as well, even though (most of) my choices in those sectors were good.

        All that said, equities are just one form of investment. In Australia, I would suggest you might also consider real estate (although historically high now), cash/fixed interest for safety, and since you are young, looking at your own business.

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        p1 ama on 07/07/2014 - 20:07

        @mskeggs:

        Yeah, I honestly think the problem is that there are lots of people out there who get confused between gambling and investing. When you're investing you're actively seeking a portfolio which gives you risk/return characteristics. Gambling is where you just "take a punt" on several stocks and see where they go.

        If you invest a lot in resources, you might want to look into hedging against commodity prices on the futures exchange, probably not ideal for personal investing, but if commodity prices change sharply, they can affect the value of resources stocks greatly.

        I wouldn't invest in real estate at the moment, it's been said that we're in the middle of a bubble due to record low interest rates. But property is always a good asset for personal investors just because of the amount of leverage you can use (plus all the usual tax benefits - i.e. negative gearing). That said though, I do have quite a bit of my capital in REITs.

        Fixed interest is a bit of a shaky one too right now, because interest rates are so low, they will go up in future and you'll be making a good capital loss on all those bonds when the rates go up.

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        mskeggs on 07/07/2014 - 20:15

        Agreed, although I will note residential real estate has been reported as being in a bubble for at least 15 years.
        The trick I think is to get your knowledge levels up so you can spot an opportunity. Nothing is better than seeing a stock or property get left friendless because sentiment is bad when you can go against the crowd and hold it until sentiment is good, and sell.

        There are some managed funds that are broadly index based, that allow small extra investments each month. Nothing wrong with beginning investing in that way while you upskill. You get the advantage of dollar cost averaging, albeit at slightly higher fees than an ETF etc. I think Magellan has reasonable offerings, from last time I looked.

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        p1 ama on 08/07/2014 - 18:46

        @mskeggs:

        Always nice to have some financial banter with someone who knows what they're talking about. It seems as if half the world thinks that you can become an overnight millionaire on the stock market and the other half think you'll lose all your money if you invest.

        Anyway, yeah, when the markets turn against you, it's always a good time to double up your investment, at least that's what all the hedge fund managers seem to think. As long as you're okay on liquidity, you're bound to get back up, as during a crisis, everything is underpriced as people rush to liquidity.

        Managed funds have higher fees than ETF, also heard about shady liquidity, i.e. difficult to sell when you want to. But I still think in the long run, managed funds will slowly have their market share eaten away by ETFs as more and more people seek to minimise management costs.

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        mskeggs on 08/07/2014 - 18:57

        @paulsterio:

        It's a two edged sword. The managed funds do typically charge more, but they accept low incremental deposits. If I have $200 a month to add to my investment I can't afford the brokerage to buy ETF shares each month. If I have $5k then it is obviously a different beast.
        I think we will see managed funds lowering prices on funds which follow an index that is also covered by an ETF. And, of course, there is no guarantee of ETF liquidity, although I suppose since they can be sold short and are market traded there should be more liquidity than a private managed fund.

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  kobrien456 on 07/07/2014 - 10:16

  Look through the commerce course at your Uni and pick up an extra subject in term or as a Summer subject.

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  Pumpkin_rrr on 07/07/2014 - 12:44

  +1

  It's nice to know a young person interested in finance. I am an Accountant myself and often I wish those CEO and GM has more inclination towards numbers/finance. It is a really good tool in managing a business.
  All the above ideas are good and worth considering, as I dont know the details of your circumstance. But I'll give my two cents worth here…
  - Since you are in Uni, would you be able to get a work experience in a financial planing firm? Might be a long-shot depending on your main degree but I reckon it's the best way to learn.
  - Some orgnisations run courses called "Finance for the Non-Finance Mangers". I have helped to facilitate this before. Since it is designed for executive staff, it will be quite high level and should be good for you. Aust Insti of Management comes to mind. But you might have others in Melbourne.

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  Kevan2 on 08/07/2014 - 19:12

  This is always a challenge, Pumpkinn_rrr has it right on 'know your circumstances'

  If you have the discipline to do this process to the end and there you will know where to start. Use a partner or someone to trust to ask the question and keep your confidence.
  LeighVic
  I was interested in a uni/tafe course that was an introduction into finance. So, more specifically, how I could get an idea as to how to invest my money wisely, as well as saving for the future etc…

  Your Adviser
  Tell me why this is important to you

  LeighVic
  Answer …………………………….!

  Your Adviser
  Tell me why this is important to you?

  DO THIS UNTIL WHEN YOU CANNOT ANSWER ANY FURTHER. [NOT SICK OF IT] THEN that last answer is the real reason why you want to do the above.

  This should then drive how you approach investing, wealth creation, protection, saving for the future.

  There lots of "free" help out there.
  http://fpa.asn.au/
  All the banks web sites, all have tools to play with
  All Investment groups , MLC, BARCLAY, PENBROKE, Yellow brick road.
  are just some.

  Two rules to know - if you can't sleep with it don't go out with it.
  and how you break up your money - for now, later on, and when old [as compared to 20 y/old] BUT MOST OF ALL put safety net around you and get expert advice on protection - insurance, income, tpd, death, trauma, possessions.