Pricing of Financial Assets

Teachers

Included in study programs

Teaching results

Upon successful completion of this course, students will have a thorough understanding, how financial markets operate, especially from the perspective of asset price setting. They will learn methods and models to assess intrinsic value of financial assets and have a thorough insight of their application in individual segments of the financial market.
Students will also become capable of identifying interlinkages between financial prices and economic processes and outlook. This course will make them further to develop their quantitative and analytical skills, in order to apply acquired theoretical approaches in the financial market practice.
I. Knowledge base and understanding
After completing this course, students should be capable of:
• applying the knowledge in quantitative analysis to assess financial asset prices
• conducting a critically evaluating individual methods and approaches to assess the value of financial instruments
• understanding inner value of financial assets and their dynamics in individual market segments
• understanding interlinkages between financial asset prices, monetary policy and economic outlook.
II. Skills and Competencies
After completing this course, students should be able to:
• communicate the key questions of assessing financial prices and their dynamics;
• analyse problems in financial markets critically and draw conclusions;
• resolve financial market issues using relevant approaches and methods and draw clear and useful recommendations
• apply and synthetize knowledge from the field of financial markets.

Indicative content

• Models of financial assets pricing. Parameters. Issuers and investors. Equilibrium.
Information. Properties of financial assets. Stochastic processes in discrete and continuous time. Definitions, terminology, probability.
• Law of One Price. Arbitrage. Predictability of asset price returns. Efficiency Market Hypothesis. Market asymmetries – information asymmetry, delayed market response, herd behaviour.
• Simulation of probability distribution of random price movements. Uncertainty, information and random processes.
• Behaviour of stock prices. Models of continuous stochastic processes. Random walk, Wiener process, geometric Brownian motion, diffusion, jumps and Ito process.
• Stock market and intrinsic value of stock. Determinants of common shares. Performance indicators and their information value.
• Simulation of interest rate movements. Models of equilibrium interest rates (Vasicek, Cox-Ingersoll-Ross). Assessing nominal and real asset prices.
• Binomial model of asset pricing. Risk neutral asset pricing.
• Volatility. Implied volatility. Sources of volatility. Estimation of implied volatility (GARCH and EWMA).
• Securities market. Assessing value of securities. Exposures and risk premia. Yield curve. Assessment of financial assets and its link to economic outlook and macroeconomic performance in general.

Support literature

Hull, John C., 2005, Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives, sixth ed., Prentice-Hall.
Malkiel, Burton G., 2007, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, W.W. Norton & Co., New York.
Munk, Claus, 2013, Financial Asset Pricing Theory, Oxford University Press.
Pennacchi, George, 2008, Theory of Asset Pricing, Pearson Addison Wesley.

Requirements to complete the course

25% individual project, 15% mid-semester test, 60% final exam.
Total study load (in hours):
1 credit = 8 hours, i.e. total student load = 6 credits * 8 hours

Student workload

Student workload: 156 hours
Attendance of lectures – 26 hours, seminars – 26 hours, seminar preparation – 26 hours
Elaboration of semester project – 20 hours, preparation for mid-term test – 10 hours
Preparation for the final exam – 48 hours

Language whose command is required to complete the course

english

Date of approval: 06.02.2023

Date of the latest change: 27.01.2022