Course Overview

IMPPI is suitable for all students interested in gaining a broad perspective on investing and the asset management business, including those targeting careers in asset management and those interested in learning how to become sophisticated consumers of investment services and products to manage more effectively their personal current and future wealth.

This course makes special emphasis in understanding where markets, opportunities, firms, and products are today and likely to be in the future, through the analysis of markets and specific investing deals, adopting an investment decision making perspective. The average age of each case in this course is short, sessions on capital markets and asset classes are updated every year, and there are always multiple brand new cases. As such, in the Fall of 2020 this course will examine the impact of the covid crisis in a large array of markets, including stock markets, bond markets, credit markets, and commodity markets, and it will also include at least three new cases focused on investment deals during the Covid-19 crisis.

Classes often feature guest speakers to help students develop an up-close perspective on the issues raised in the case discussion and enhance students’ skills in investment decision making.

The topics covered in the course are selected to capture the most pressing issues in investing, grouped under four broad key managerial and investment themes:

• Evaluating specific investment opportunities in an array of public and private markets from an investment decision making perspective
• Structuring and implementation of investment decisions
• Building investment portfolios in a world of low and uncertain interest rates and returns
• Innovating in the asset management industry
• Managing the investment firm

The course has an eminently practice-oriented focus, so cases or market analyses will be the main assigned reading for each class. Sometimes students are assigned supplementary readings designed to enhance the understanding of the issues at hand in the case.