Financial Markets and Instruments

Overview

This course is part of a Specialization titled “Strategy and Finance for a Lifecycle of a Social Business”. The beauty of a modern decision-making framework is that it can be used to understand value creation at any level – the individual or business or societal. The applications however become increasingly complex as your lens expands from the individual to the corporate/nonprofit to the global society. There are two building blocks of modern decision making – time value of money and risk. This is because all decisions are made with consequences for the future which, in turn is uncertain. A deep understanding of the value of time and risk is therefore key to understanding value creation. This third course is an introduction to markets and two financial instruments, bonds and stocks, and how they are valued using the principles of time value of money covered in the two preceding courses in this specialization. The main purpose of this course is to serve as a bridge to figuring out the risk and return that individuals or businesses must use to figure out the value of any decision. While the return on any decision is ultimately determined by its risk, bond and stock markets enable the determination of the risk and return. This may be the biggest social value created by markets. Since individuals and households ultimately provide capital to both governments and businesses though the market, this course will also serve useful for personal financial decision-making. As indicated at the outset, the beauty of modern frameworks and tools of analysis is that they are logical and do not change depending on the purpose of business. However, to demonstrate social impact is very complex because prices for both the public good, and any harm created by our actions, are not available. It is also very challenging to determine the incremental effect of a business on society at large. The combination of these issues makes all social impact and value specific to a business, making it even more important to use the same frameworks and tools developed in this Specialization to value any business.