courses_for_you/finance_course.html

2025-07-11

Finance course

Haven't made a proper course as it's a not an immediate priority.

Topics I strongly recommend to almost everyone

Intro to asset classes
- equity, bonds, crypto, gold and other commodities, real estate
Intro to derivatives
- margin trading, quarterly/monthly futures, perpetual futures (popular in crypto), european and american options
Intro to risk
- time value of money
- expected value, variance, sharpe ratio
  - Maximising expected value is not enough, you want maximise expected value given a certain variance, tail risk and time horizon. Two opportunities may have same expected value but one may be way better than the other.
- tail risk, log utility, kelly criterion
  - Variance and tail risk are two different risks, don't mix them up. Calculate separate values for both.
Trading in practice
- understanding orderbook, limit/market orders, stoploss, etc
Effects of large portfolio size (> $10M)
- absorb more tail risk (due to log utility)
- access illiquid but big opportunities
- pay full-time employees to do analysis for you, thereby increasing expected value of bets
- illiquid small opportunities are no longer worth your time
  - (if you are trading personal funds, you have comparative advantage in illiquid markets where big players don't bet)

Topics I weakly recommend (depends on your situation and your interests)

Financial theory
- Markowitz optimisation, formal proofs surrounding EMH, long-term versus short-term
Fundamental analysis
- EBIDTA, balance sheet analysis
Options trading
- brownian motion, black scholes model, black scholes as applied in practice
Liquidation process

Topics I recommend you avoid

Enter email to subscribe, or enter comment to post comment