What Will I learn? Course objectives
Experiential learning and skill acquisition
Information technology is an essential ingredient for success in the fast-paced financial industry. GCOM7720 is designed to give you a competitive advantage in your next job by providing you with hands-on experience with coding to solve business problems, and a deeper understanding of the role of IT in financial domains.
The class has three sections that build on each other. The first section focuses on process automation. You will learn the fundamentals of coding macros in Excel using state-of-the-art technologies. The second section deals with business intelligence techniques, specifically the creation and execution of dynamic SQL queries that retrieve and process information that resides in remote enterprise databases. The third section is about financial engineering. You will develop create a robotrader, a software that manages a $50mil portfolio of stock and options in turbulent financial markets and hedges financial risk settings by buying and selling stocks and options in real time. By participating in the yearly McIntire Hedge Tournament you will be able to tell to your employer an exciting story about how you and your team designed and developed technologies to solve a challenging business problem.
While the Tournament is an exciting endeavor in itself, it is also a means to achieve broader educational goals. GComm7720 teaches you how to use Information Technology to automate and support decision making in business. Taking this class will help you to (1) think computationally, i.e., understand in concrete and specific terms how information technology solves business problems, and (2) develop hands-on skills in current and widely-used tools for process automation, business intelligence, and financial engineering.
Contents
The HT
Some of the following links will be enabled later in the course.