Back to School Edition: Educational Resources

A short review of investment-related courses

Hi! It’s George from Investorama. It’s back to school now, so I’m sharing great investment courses - they are mostly free.

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This summer has been about training for me: body and mind. I’ve been swimming, learning chess, training to become a water polo coach and taking investing courses. This newsletter is only about the latter, but physical activities are a good reminder that learning is complex and not linear. The educational system makes us think otherwise: you get the diploma, and then you’re done. In sports, when you don’t improve, you regress and there are drills that you can repeat endlessly.

I started taking courses, primarily as research for building my own. But it turned out to be a lot more:

1. A good drill for brain activity

2. Improving my investing knowledge - making better decisions

3. An enjoyable activity - yes, I’m embracing my inner nerd by learning finance on the beach

4. Understanding the world a bit better

5. Falling back in ‘love’ with finance - it’s been a love-hate relationship over the years, but I think we’re past the difficult years between finance and me. And I have to thank Robert J. Shiller for that (more about that below)

Let’s start with the courses:

Financial Markets

• Yale University on Coursera

• Instructor: Robert J. Shiller

• Free

1.6 million people have taken the course from Nobel Prize Winner Robert Shiller. It’s meant to be accessible by anyone. It’s not designed for finance students. It’s not quantitative. Yet, I consider it an advanced course with an ambitious goal to provide an overview of the investment ecosystem. It’s very comprehensive as it covers many areas of modern finance.

It’s a chunky course meant to be taken over seven weeks. The quizzes are accessible but challenging (you don’t need to take them).

I highly recommend it to anyone motivated enough - whether they are IN finance or INTO finance.

Narrative Economics

• Yale University on Coursera

• Instructor: Robert J. Shiller

• Free

Same instructor as the previous course: Rober Shiller, one of the founders of behavioural economics, has now turned his focus to narrative economics. I like the narrative economics concept because it has practical application. It’s more useful than thinking in terms of bubbles that are only based on valuations.

Private Debt

• Unifi by CAIA

• Instructor: Aaron Filbeck

• Free for CAIA members - available to purchase

This course unveils a lesser-known finance area that is becoming much more visible.

To learn more about it, check out my interview with Aaron.

Private Equity

• Bocconi University on Coursera

• Instructor: Stefano Caselli

• Free

Like the course above on Private Debt, from an outsider’s point of view, this allows us to understand the complexity and nuance of what we read in the press or pitches as “Private Equity”. It’s, in fact, varied activities that intervene through all the stages of the funding lifecycle.

Digital Assets

• Unifi by CAIA

• Instructor: Various

• Free for CAIA members - available to purchase

Full disclosure: I haven’t finished it yet - but I will.

Just like the Private Debt course, it is well constructed. Yet, this is a course where I have some reservations, while I thoroughly recommend the previous ones. It starts with the fact that Coinbase Asset Management sponsors it. As a keen student of the crypto world, I fear it may not always keep a safe distance from the narratives of the crypto industry (see Shiller). I will report back once I’ve completed it!

Keep learning!