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Behavioural finance
- An introduction to the terminology and some of the impact behavioural finance can have on the investment decision making process
- Over-optimism
- Cognitive dissonance
- Confirmation bias
- Conservatism bias
- Anchoring
- Representativeness
- Heuristic – rules of thumb
- Availability bias
- Ambiguity aversion
- Reference dependence
- Errors of preference
- Violations of LOOP
- AMH – Adaptive Market Hypothesis
- Behavioural finance and technical analysis

Current macroeconomic issues
- The cause of the "credit crunch", the techniques and polices used to try and deal with it, the current position of the UK economy and the outlook for recovery
- Analysis of UK macroeconomic recent data
- Components of aggregate demand
- Relationship between Aggregate Demand and GDP
- The NICE decade for the UK and the West
- Fiscal and Monetary policy
- Changing UK economy and global growth
- The operation of monetary policy during the crisis and its limitations
- Fiscal policy and the impact on the real economy

Derivatives in action
- Trading, using and valuing derivative instruments and putting the basic building blocks in place to understand forward and option contracts together with futures and swaps
- Forward contracts
- Futures
- Options
- Option strategies and their usage
- Option pricing
- Interpreting the ‘'greeks'
- Embedded options and structured products
- Swaps

Alternative investments
- Decrease the overall risk of your portfolio by reviewing potential returns from alternative investments
- Exchange traded funds
- Property – real estate
- Venture capital
- Changes over the investment cycle
- Entrepreneur, the VC and investors
- Hedge Funds

Equity markets
- A valuable introductory insight for new joiners to sales, trading, dealing or broking
- Role of the stock markets
- Who buys equity?
- Role of investment banks
- The importance of asset allocation
- Collective investment
- Active vs. passive management
- Types of shares
- Investor ratios
- Dealing procedures
- Inter dealer brokers
- Share issues
- Takeovers and mergers
- Market abuse/insider dealing
- Valuing equity using the dividend valuation model

Fixed income
- With a focus on money market instruments and bonds, uncover the different product types and their associated jargon
- Debt vs. equity
- The fixed income markets
- Money market instruments
- Bonds
- Credit ratings

Foreign exchange and money markets
- With a view to ensure you don’t lose out on your currency transactions, a full understanding of how the money markets work and who uses them will be essential
- Foreign exchange quotation
- American and European terms
- Pips and big figures
- Market participants and influences on the exchange rate
- Triangular arbitrage between spot rates
- Forward rates
- Purchasing power parity and International Fisher
- Foreign exchange options
- Swaps

The City and financial markets
- A solid technical foundation to enable further exploration
- What is the 'City'
- The UK banking system – investment, merchant and retail banks
- The equity market- Stock Exchange listings, stockbrokers, trading mechanisms
- The bond market - bond pricing, risk, interest rates and yields
- The money market
- Foreign exchange – spot versus forward exchange rates
- Derivatives – futures, options and swaps

Life cycle of a trade
- The flow of a trade and identify fundamental issues in pre-trade, controlling and settlement along with key transaction systems involved in clearing and settlement transactions
- Pre-Trade
- Compliance
- The meaning of settlement
- Clearing process
- Asset classes
- Exchange vs. over the counter
- Documentation
- Market participants
- Primary and secondary markets
- Settlement process
- Types of settlement
- Overview of crest
- Settlement of uncertified transactions
- Settlement of certificated transactions
- Central counterparty
- Residual settlement
- Stamp duty and stamp duty reserve tax
- Nominee companies
- Global custody

The credit crunch and its aftermath
- An insight into the linkages between sub-prime and toxic debt, the banking sector, Government bond markets and a fuller understanding of the biggest financial shock in 80 years
- The banking and money markets
- Government bond markets and the yield curve
- Corporate bonds
- Securitisation
- The emergence of sub-prime
- The problems for the banking system
- The drop in liquidity
- The credit crunch
- Policies to deal with the 'crunch' and the problems of using interest rates
- The impact on Government bond markets; problems of a country’s credit
- Possible changes in the financial system

Financial Markets