Lectures
One page per week of lectures. Each page has a short overview of the topics covered and the slide decks to download. Slides are posted by the start of each week.
Introduction & Finance 1-0-1
What this course is about and how it works, followed by the finance toolkit we build on all semester: assets, present value, time value of money, risk, compounding, and inflation.
Open lecture page →Portfolio Theory
Markowitz mean-variance optimization: diversification, the efficient frontier, the Sharpe ratio, and the tangency portfolio — the theory you will put to work in PC Lab 1.
Open lecture page →CAPM and APT
From portfolio choice to asset pricing: the Capital Asset Pricing Model, the Security Market Line, and Arbitrage Pricing Theory — and how they hold up in practice.
Open lecture page →Empirical Asset Pricing
Data-driven finance begins: the Fama–French three-factor model, how factors are built, the 'factor zoo' problem, and modern statistical answers to it.
Open lecture page →Asset Pricing with Big Data
Where the course title comes true: alternative data, machine learning methods in asset pricing, what they can and cannot do — and a few warnings about disruption.
Open lecture page →Microeconomics of Banking
Why do banks exist? Asymmetric information, liquidity transformation, and the Diamond–Dybvig model — the economics beneath every balance sheet.
Open lecture page →Banking in the Age of AI
Machine learning inside the bank: how ML changes screening and lending, and what FinTech competition means for traditional intermediaries.
Open lecture page →Financial Intermediation in the Age of AI
The frontier questions: fairness and discrimination in algorithmic finance, search frictions, and how data is reshaping private equity and venture capital.
Open lecture page →Payment Technology & Foundations of Blockchain
A double session: how payments actually work, what went wrong at FTX, and the cryptographic foundations of blockchain — plus exam format and final-presentation logistics.
Open lecture page →Cryptocurrency and Smart Contracts
The last lecture: the FTX/Alameda balance sheet up close, how cryptocurrencies work as assets, and what smart contracts can (and cannot) do.
Open lecture page →