Wall Street 101 Courses, Formats, and Schedule

This course teaches you what a financial analyst at a Wall Street firm does. Using industry-standard valuation models, you will learn about financial statement analysis, forecasting, risk analysis, and analyst recommendations. You will also learn how to value firms using the latest industry-standard indicators of firm performance on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. Finally, you will learn how to prepare an industry-standard stock pitch, present your stock pitch to clients or investment managers, and interact with financial executives.  

Prerequisite:  Attending this course without a background in the stock market might be challenging at first, but many students overcome the initial hurdle. We recommend a pre-program reading available on the internet (like many others): The Basics for Investing in Stocks to familiarize yourself with some concepts covered in the course. After that, you may want to read Mr. Peter Lynch's classic, "One Up on Wall Street." You can watch YouTube videos, including "The Ultimate Guide To Stock Market Investing" by Peter Lynch. Some students also find watching CNBC to be quite helpful.  

This is an overview course on the link between the economy and the global financial markets, particularly how government monetary and fiscal policies and the state of the economy impact stocks, bonds, currencies, and alternative assets.  As major policy decisions or economic, political, social, financial, and corporate news are announced, retail investors, traders, portfolio managers, and hedge funds, for example, change their trading and investment strategies.  Their trading decisions affect securities prices in real-time. Overall, students will learn how the financial markets respond to current events and headlines about, for example, healthcare, inflation, jobs, taxes, interest rates, industrial performance, politics, war, terrorism, and natural disasters.  This course is a gateway to understanding the link between the economy and the capital markets.

Whether you are interested in becoming a financial advisor in your career or better want to understand how to plan your own personal retirement, diversify your portfolio, understand taxes, and manage your own family wealth; this course is for you. Using hands on simulations to see how various decisions impact short- and long-term plans will help students better understand how financial planning works in the real world.      

The course provides students with an introduction and broad overview of the FinTech ecosystem, focusing on how technological innovation drives disruption and evolution in the financial services sector. From seamless record-keeping and faster payment processing to advanced wealth management, banking, insurance, and lending, FinTech is reshaping how money moves and creates value. Students are encouraged to think with an entrepreneurial mindset and will learn the principles of FinTech firm valuation, the impact of technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence, and the strategic approaches startups use to deliver value through groundbreaking products and services. This course is ideal for students aspiring to lead in the financial services industry, work in FinTech startups, or develop innovative solutions that meet the needs of a digital-first economy.