Key Learning Objectives

• Gain a deep understanding of the investment management industry and the risk and returns of various asset classes, such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, and derivatives.
• Learn how to combine different assets together to maximize the return on your investment and minimize its risk. 
• Gain insights on sustainable investing, and the impact of artificial intelligence and machine learning on optimal investment strategies. 
• Obtain key practical insights on investment strategies from case discussions, investment professionals, and networking events.

Why Chicago Booth?

One unquestioned strength of Chicago Booth is our world-renowned faculty. A diverse group of more than 200 preeminent business scholars, our faculty have been shaping education since we opened our doors in 1898. Ten Booth scholars—four of whom are currently teaching—have won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

Chicago Booth faculty collaborate and consult with firms, serve on corporate boards, start their own companies, and are sought out for their award-winning research and renowned analyses. World leaders, media outlets, and top global companies regularly turn to our faculty members for their expertise and insights. When you attend our executive education programs, you’ll learn from the same professors who teach in our MBA program, as well as industry leaders—receiving a distinctive mix of theory and real-world applications you can enact immediately.

Our Global Locations

We are the first and only US business school with permanent campuses on three continents—Chicago, London, and Hong Kong. This program includes an offering at each of our global campuses. 

• Portfolio managers working at mutual funds, pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, etc.
• Chief investment officers, treasury officers, and risk managers at private corporations, not-for-profits entities, etc. 
• Financial advisors and family wealth management officers 
• High net-worth individuals and other retail investors who manage their own money
• Bankers and employees of insurance companies who need to learn about financial securities
• National governments' treasury and central bank officials involved in financial markets
• Sell-side analysts and other capital market participants who need to better understand the risk and returns of financial securities

Foundations: The Landscape of Investment Assets

• Overview of asset classes and risk/return profiles: Stocks, treasury and corporate bonds, mutual funds, hedge funds, ETFs, real estate, alternative investments, pension funds, etc.

Portfolio Allocation - Risk vs. Return Tradeoff

• Examine principles that govern portfolio allocation strategies, focusing on optimizing returns while managing risk exposure effectively
• Practical considerations in portfolio construction, including the role of asset correlation and volatility in shaping risk profiles and return expectations
• Examine the impact of international diversification of portfolios

Diversification and Optimal Portfolio Allocation

• Gain a comprehensive understanding of how to construct diversified portfolios that leverage the principles of the efficient frontier, tangent portfolios, and market equilibrium to optimize investment outcomes

The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM)

• Implications of CAPM-- the most famous benchmark for asset returns-- and its limitations
• Security Market Line, the estimation of betas, and their implications for portfolio allocation

Multi-factor Models

• General Market Model as well as three, four, and five factor models

Size, Value, and Momentum

• Value vs. growth stocks, small caps vs. large caps, and momentum portfolios, as well as rational and behavioral explanations of anomalies

Fixed Income Portfolio Management

• How do fixed-income portfolios fit with equity investments? Examine interest rate risk of bonds portfolios, their betas, and optimal fixed income allocation and its dependence on inflation expectations.

Active Asset Management

• Gain a comprehensive understanding of the complexities and nuances inherent in active asset management; deepen your knowledge of quant investing, information ratios, skill, diversification, efficiency, data mining, constraints, and costs.

Trends in Investing

• Examine trends in investing including competition, factor investing, investing beyond returns, and fee compression

Alphas and Optimal Asset Allocation

• The relation between “alphas”, Sharpe ratios, Information ratios, and other similar performance measures
• Analyze the impact of “alpha” estimation on optimal portfolio allocation to provide the full picture of the trade-off between risk and returns in strategic asset allocation

Big Data, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence in Asset Management

• Examine AI, including the 'why', 'what', and 'when' behind machine-learning models and natural language processing
• Apply big data to event forecasting

Fundamental Indexing and Smart Beta Investing

• The foundation of Smart Beta investing and performance
• Equal weighting versus value weighting and dynamic factor rotation

Sustainable Investing

• Impact of preferences for sustainable investing on the returns for “green” assets, such as stocks and bonds

Content is taught by a mix of Booth faculty and senior executives, often Booth alumni, who will lead case discussions and networking sessions. Program outline is subject to change.