Finance Minor

An introduction to the way in which corporations report their financial performance to interested stakeholders such as investors and creditors. Coverage of the accounting cycle, generally accepted accounting principles, and analytical tools help students become informed users of financial statements. (This course is available to RIT degree-seeking undergraduate students.) Lecture 3 (Fall, Spring, Summer).

Basic course in financial management. Covers business organization, time value of money, valuation of securities, capital budgeting decision rules, risk-return relation, Capital Asset Pricing Model, financial ratios, global finance, and working capital management. (Prerequisites: (ECON-101 or ECON-201) and ACCT-110 and (STAT-145 or STAT-251 or CQAS-251 or MATH-251 or MATH-252 or STAT-205) or equivalent courses.) Lecture 3 (Fall, Spring, Summer).

Examines financial decisions people must make in their personal lives. Covers personal taxation, housing and mortgages, consumer credit, insurance (including life, health, property and casualty), and retirement and estate planning. Also reviews the common financial investments made by individuals, including stocks, bonds, money market instruments and mutual funds. This class involves extensive use of the internet for access to information. (Students in the Finance Program may use this course only as a free elective, not as a course creditable towards the Finance Program.) (This course is available to RIT degree-seeking undergraduate students.) Lecture 3 (Fall, Spring, Summer).

Advanced course in financial management. Covers project cash-flow analysis, issuance of securities, cost of capital, debt policy, dividend policy, and market efficiency. (Prerequisites: FINC-220 or equivalent course.) Lecture 3 (Fall, Spring, Summer).

This course provides a comprehensive survey of the major financial markets and institutions in the U.S. and abroad. This course analyzes the important structural features of the major markets and notes the interaction of the financial markets with the decisions of financial institutions, corporations, and the government. (Prerequisites: FINC-220 or equivalent course.) Lecture 3 (Fall, Spring).

Focuses on the financial investment problems faced by individuals and institutions. Theoretical topics include asset pricing, hedging and arbitrage. Application topics include risk management in bond-and-stock portfolio context. A discussion of options, futures and swaps also is included. (Prerequisites: FINC-220 or equivalent course.) Lecture 3 (Fall, Spring).

Discusses the problems posed by the international financial environment in which corporations operate. In particular, students learn to quantify and manage risks arising from shifting exchange rates. Other topics include exchange rate systems, international trade finance, international capital budgeting, country risk analysis, and long-term international financing. (Prerequisites: FINC-220 or equivalent course.) Lecture 3 (Fall, Spring, Summer).

The course is a “hands-on” lab-based class designed to help students develop algorithmic trading strategies to invest in the stock market that can be implemented by retail and professional traders.The course has a strong emphasis on practical application with the purpose of building marketable skills for careers in finance. Students learn how to design algorithmic trading models through the use of a computerized trading platform that allows back-testing of data on thousands of different stocks. The software platform includes an automated wizard for building advanced technical trading models without programming knowledge; but also has an embedded programming language, similar to C-sharp, for those students that have those skills and elect to use them. (Knowledge of programming is not required; and there are no pre or co-requisites; but a laptop is strongly recommended.). Lecture 3 (Spring).

This course focuses on strategic financial management of the corporation. It employs pedagogies that emphasize analysis and evaluation of applied financial problems. Topics include working capital management, financial statement analysis, valuation, capital budgeting decisions, and risk management. (Prerequisites: FINC-352 or equivalent course.) Lecture 3 (Spring).

In this course, students learn to obtain and organize financial data and conduct financial analysis such as discounted cash flow analysis, risk analysis and financial forecasting. Sources of data include web-based sources and proprietary databases. Excel will be the main software tool. (Prerequisites: FINC-352 or equivalent course.) Lecture 3 (Fall, Spring).

This course explores risk management from the viewpoint of a finance professional. The primary tools used are derivative instruments such as options, futures and swaps. Students learn about the basic features of derivative instruments: how to value them, how they are traded, and how to use them to mitigate various types of financial risk. (Prerequisites: FINC-220 or equivalent course.) Lecture 3 (Fall, Spring).

Special topics seminars offer an in-depth examination of current events, issues and problems unique to finance. Specific topics will vary depending upon student and faculty interests and on recent events in the business world. Seminar topics for a specific semester will be announced prior to the course offering. These seminars may be repeated for credit since topics will normally vary from semester to semester. (Instructor determined) (This course is available to RIT degree-seeking undergraduate students.) Lecture 3 .

The course focuses on financial issues affecting an entrepreneur. The course emphasizes, identifies and follows the wealth creation cycle. The wealth creation cycle begins with an idea for a good, product or service, progresses to an initial company startup, passes through successive stages of growth, considers alternative approaches to resource financing, and ends with harvesting the wealth created through an initial public offering, merger or sale. Identification and valuation of business opportunities, how and from whom entrepreneurs raise funds, how financial contracts are structured to both manage risk and align incentives, and alternative approaches by which entrepreneurs identify exit strategies are reviewed. (This class is restricted to undergraduate students with at least 3rd year standing.) Lecture 3 (Fall, Spring).

Financial analytics is the use of business analytics methods and tools on financial data to solve problems such as investment and risk analysis, portfolio optimization, valuation, default modeling, and so on. This course introduces a contemporary tool (R or Python) and its use in solving these problems. In this hands-on course, students also learn about the field of fintech. (Prerequisites: FINC-220 or equivalent course.) Lecture 3 (Fall).