Academics + Research

Asset Management Practicum

Students interested in asset management may chose to follow the Asset Management Pathway, a special set of courses offered by the Kellogg finance department. At the core of the Asset Management Pathway is an experiential learning course sequence, the Asset Management Practicum (FINC 456, FINC 457, and FINC 458). Students enroll in the Practicum for a minimum of 2 quarters and are encouraged to enroll for 3 quarters. In the practicum — a for-credit course with limited enrollment — students manage a portfolio under the guidance of faculty from the finance and accounting departments. Currently, the portfolio’s value is approximately $19.5 million.

Practicum students are responsible for analyzing individual investments, making asset allocation decisions, trading, risk monitoring, and performance evaluation. An integral part of the course is a series of guest lectures from industry leaders.

Currently the program focuses on a portfolio of equities (including long-only as well as long/short strategies).

Also see Kellogg’s pathways in:

Faculty

The class is co-taught by Professor Phillip Braun, Ryan Garino, Philip Ordway, and Professor Robert Korajczyk.

Suggested readings

    • Revsine, Lawrence, Daniel W. Collins, W. Bruce Johnson, and H. Fred Mittelstaedt Financial Reporting & Analysis, 4th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2009.
    • Kahneman, Daniel, Thinking, Fast and Slow, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
    • Pompian, Michael M., Behavioral Finance and Wealth Management, New York: Wiley, 2006.
    • Shefrin, Hersh, A Behavioral Approach to Asset Pricing, Burlington, MA: Elsevier Academic Press, 2005.
    • Shefrin, Hersh, Beyond Greed and Fear: Understanding Behavioral Finance and the Psychology of Investing, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000.
    • Shleifer, Andrei, Inefficient Markets: An Introduction to Behavioral Finance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
    • Thaler, Richard, The Winner’s Curse, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
    • McDonald, Robert, Derivatives Market, 3rd Edition. Boston: Pearson Education, 2013.
    • Altman, Edward I., and Edith Hotchkiss, Corporate Financial Distress and Bankruptcy, 3rd Edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006.
    • Chacko, George, Anders Sjöman, Hideto Motohashi, and Vincent Dessain, Credit Derivatives: A Primer on Credit Risk, Modeling and Instruments, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Peason Education, 2006.
    • Chaplin, Geoff, Credit Derivatives: Risk Management, Trading and Investing, England: Wiley, 2005.
    • Duffie, Darrell, and Kenneth J. Singleton, Credit Risk: Pricing, Measurement, and Management, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.
    • Tuckman, Bruce, and Angel Serrat Fixed Income Securities: Tools for Today’s Markets, 3rd Edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011.
    • Lhabitant, François-Serge, Hedge Funds: Quantitative Insights, England: Wiley, 2004.
    • Lo, Andrew W., Hedge Funds: An Analytic Perspective, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
    • McCrary, Stuart A., How To Create & Manage A Hedge Fund, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2002.
    • Ellis, Charles D., Investment Policy: How to Win the Loser's Game. Homewood, IL: Dow Jones-Irwin, 1985.
    • Mauboussin, Michael J., More Than You Know. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
    • Treynor, Jack L., Treynor on Institutional Investing. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008.
    • Zweig, Jason, Your Money & Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconmics Can Help Make You Rich, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.
    • Simmons, Michael, and Elaine Dalgleish, Corporate Actions, Chichester: Wiley, 2006.
    • Bodie, Zvi, Alex Kane, and Alan J. Marcus, Investments, 9th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.
    • Campbell , John Y., and Luis M. Viceira, Strategic Asset Allocation: Portfolio Choice for Long-Term Investors. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
    • Damodaran, Aswath, Investment Fables: Exposing the Myths of "Can't Miss" Investment Strategies. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 2004.
    • Grinold, Richard C. and Ronald N. Kahn, Active Portfolio Management, 2nd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999.
    • Litterman, Bob, Modern Investment Management: An Equilibrium Approach. New York: Wiley, 2003.
    • Michaud, Richard O., Efficient Asset Management. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1998.
    • Maginn, John L., Donald L. Tuttle, Jerald F. Pinto, and Dennis W. McLeavey, Managing Investment Portfolios: A Dynamic Process, 3rd edition. Hoboken: Wiley, 2007.
    • Qian, Edward E., Ronald H. Hua, and Eric Sorensen, Quantitative Equity Portfolio Management: Modern Techniques and Applications. Boca Raton: Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2007.
    • Christoffersen, Peter F., Elements of Financial Risk Management. San Diego: Academic Press, 2003.
    • Connor, Gregory, Lisa R. Goldberg, and & Robert A. Korajczyk, Portfolio Risk Analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
    • Dowd, Kevin, Measuring Market Risk, 2nd edition. Chichester: Wiley, 2005.
    • Jorion, Philippe, Value at Risk, 3rd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.
    • Knight, John, and Stephen Satchell, Linear Factor Models in Finance, Burlington, MA: Elsevier, 2005.
    • Mandelbrot, Benoit, and Richard L. Hudson, The (mis)Behavior of Markets, New York: Basic Books, 2004.
    • Osband, Kent, Iceberg Risk: An Adventure in Portfolio Theory, New York: Texere, 2002.
    • Rebonato, Riccardo, Plight of the Fortune Tellers: Why We Need to Manage Financial Risk Differently, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
    • Graham, Benjamin, The Intelligent Investor, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1949 (Foreword 2005 by John C. Bogle).
    • Greenwald, Bruce C. N., Judd Kahn, Paul D. Sonkin, and Michael van Biema, Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond. New York: Wiley, 2001.
    • Klarman, Seth A., Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor, New York: HarperCollins, 1991.
    • Koller, Tim, Marc Goedhart, and David Wessels, Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies, 5 th edition. New York: Wiley, 2010.
    • Madden, Bartley J., CFROI Valuation. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999.
    • Palepu, Krishna G., Paul M. Healey, and Victor Bernard, Business Analysis and Valuation, 2nd edition. Cincinnati: South-Western, 2000.
    • Rappaport, Alfred, and Michael J. Mauboussin, Expectations Investing. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2001.
    • Fabozzi, Frank J., Short Selling: Strategies, Risks, and Rewards, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004.
    • Fabozzi, Frank J., and Steven V. Mann, Securities Finance: Securities, Lending and Repurchase agreements, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2005.
    • Fearon, Scott, Dead Companies Walking, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015.
    • Holden, Craig W., Spreadsheet Modeling in Investments, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2002.
    • Jackson, Mary, and Mike Staunton, Advanced Modelling In Finance and Using Excel and VBA, England: Wiley, 2001.
    • Winston, Wayne, Financial Models using Simulation and Optimization, Ithaca, NY: Palisade Corp., 2008.
    • Alexander, Carol, Market Models. Chichester: Wiley, 2001.
    • Alexander, Carol, Practical Financial Econometrics. Chichester: Wiley, 2008.
    • Campbell, John Y., Andrew W. Lo, and A. Craig MacKinlay, The Econometrics of Financial Markets. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
    • Maddala, G. S., and C. R. Rao, Statistical Methods in Finance. Volume 14 of Handbooks of Statistics. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1996.
    • Tsay, Ruey S., Statistical Methods in Analysis of Financial Time Series. Hoboken: Wiley, 2005.
    • Scholes, Myron, S., Mark A. Wolfson, Merle Erickson, Edward L. Maydew, and Terry Shevlin, Taxes and Business Strategy, 3rd Edition, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2004.
    • Aldridge, Irene, High-Frequency Trading. Hoboken: Wiley, 2010.
    • Harris, Larry, Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practioners, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
    • Hasbrouck, Joel, Empirical Market Microstructure: The Institutions, Economics, and Econometrics of Securities Trading. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
    • Kissell, Robert, The Science of Algorithmic Trading and Portfolio Management. Academic Press, 2013.
    • Wagner, Wayne H., The Complete Guide to Securities Transactions: Enhancing Investment Performance and Controlling Costs. New York: Wiley, 1989.

  • The above readings are plenty of fun – but these are just for fun.

    • Bernstein, Peter, L., Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, New York: Wiley, 1996.
    • Bernstein, Peter L., Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street. New York: The Free Press, 1992.
    • Brown, Aaron, The Poker Face of Wall Street. New York: Wiley, 2007.
    • Buffett, Warren E., and Lawrence A. Cunningham, The Essays of Warren Buffett : Lessons for Corporate America, second edition. The Cunningham Group, 2008.
    • Crack, Timothy Falcon, Heard on The Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviews, 10th edition, Timothy Crack, 2007.
    • Lewis, Michael, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, New York: W.W. Norton, 2003.
    • Lewis, Michael, Flash Boys, New York: W.W. Norton, 2014.
    • Patterson, Scott, The Quants, New York: Crown Business, 2010.
    • Schwed, Fred Jr., Where are the Customers Yachts? New York: Wiley, 1940
    • Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, 2nd Edition. New York: Random House, 2005.
    • Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. New York: Random House, 2007.

Contact us about the Asset Management Practicum

Tamar Selch
Associate Director, Finance Department
Global Hub Room 4393
tamar.selch@kellogg.northwestern.edu
847.491.4604

 

Interested in hiring AMP students? 

View the resume book or contact Joseph Patton (Career Management Center)