This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the trading and valuation of financial securities. It will also familiarize students with financial markets and institutions, such as stock exchanges, brokerages, mutual funds, and hedge funds. The main topics include: financial securities and trading; financial institutions; security offerings; the investment process (asset allocation and security selection); how to understand investment risk and return; asset pricing models and their applications to portfolio allocation decisions; the Efficient Market Hypothesis; behavioral finance; stock and bond valuation; and an introduction to derivative securities. This course provides a good foundation for those students who are interested in sitting for the series seven securities license exam, the CFP ? , and the CFA? exams. This course is a prerequisite for most other finance courses. All finance majors are required to take this course.