The way we perform financial analysis has been transformed buy the availability of the PC-based spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft’s Excel and add-in programs that complement Excel, including Crystal Ball. These programs have increased the speed and reliability with which we can do conventional financial analysis and have put time-consuming and often tedious work – including simulation and optimization – building and financial theory. This course will provide students with the skills toward this end.within reach of students of finance. Financial professionals today need sound knowledge offinancial model

After completing this course, the student will be able to:

1. Understand formulas, functions, and commands of Excel for financial calculations.
2. Confidently apply finance theory and concepts to construct spreadsheet models.
3. Gain hands-on experience in designing and implementing their own financial models.
4. Develop competencies needed to function well in teams.

1. Excel Basic features and functions.
2. Financial functions: Time value of money and basic valuation.
3. Portfolio Models - Introduction.
4. Calculating Efficient Portfolios
5. Calculating the Variance-Covariance matrix
6. Estimating BETA and Security Market Line (SML)
7. Options: Introduction
8. The Log-normal distribution, the black-Scholes model

Financial Modeling, 4^th Edition, by Simon Benninga (acronym SB) MIT Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-262-02728-1.
Mills, T. C., &Markellos, R. N. (2008). The econometric modelling of financial time series. Cambridge University Press.

Thomson Reuters DataStream terminal (access can be provided by the lecturer);
Bloomberg terminal (access can be provided by the lecturer).