Finance You Need to Know

This course is designed to provide students who have had limited or no prior exposure to business or finance the tools they need to understand a much bigger part of the world around them. Whether your goal is to become a software engineer, lawyer, surgeon, or artist or to work in the non-profit sector, your career and personal life will be impacted by finance and business decisions made by you and those around you. ______________________________________________

Perhaps you need to be something of a genius to understand quantum physics and black holes. For business and finance...not so much. I promise.

There is so much going on in the world around you. How do you understand it?

• At one point Tesla was valued by the market at more than all the other US car manufacturers combined. Does that make any sense?
• Bitcoin is trading at $60,000; then $20,000. One day Sam Bankman-Fried is a crypto multi-billionaire and within a week he is broke and facing jail.
• Is Apple really the most valuable company on the planet? What does that even mean?
• WeWork was said to be worth $50 billion by folks who are generally considered to be awfully smart. Then it is worth less than half a billion dollars. Huh?
• Silicon Valley Bank, the commercial bank with relationships with more than 50% of all the start-up companies in the US blows itself up within a matter of days and the Federal Reserve Bank needs to rescue its depositors. Some think we are headed for another “great financial crisis.”
• States around the country are telling some of the world’s largest money managers that they cannot manage funds for state employee retirement funds if they focus at all on environmental, social or governance issues (“ESG”). Meanwhile the planet is getting warmer and sea levels are rising; the wealth gap between the wealthy and the struggling is exploding; and corporate accountability remains elusive.

This course will provide a basic understanding of corporate finance, accounting, the debt and equity capital markets and the central role that financial analysis and decision- making play in our integrated global economy. We will begin by learning how corporations are created and organized; the respective roles and duties of boards of directors, management, and shareholders; and how conflicts arise and may be resolved. Students will then begin to develop the ability to read and understand financial statements and hopefully come to appreciate that this can be a fascinating and eye-opening endeavor.

I love teaching the basics of bond math and we can get as deep in the weeds as students like. This leads to one of the core learnings of the class—the time value of money. Once this is mastered—and it is mastered by 100% of my students—we can gain some familiarity with the basic tools used in valuing a business. Students will explore in some depth the concepts of risk and return and learn the fundamentals and key drivers of financial analysis. Real world examples—including META, Twitter, Amazon, Tesla, Apple, SVB, Uber, Robinhood, Coinbase, and Bed Bath & Beyond—will be used to illustrate these concepts as we develop them throughout the semester.

My goal is to help students learn enough about business and finance to better understand the past, present, and future. The course is about being smarter, more tuned-in and more thoughtful about what you see, hear, and read. (If I can figure out how to weave it into the course, we may also chat a bit about black holes, Hawking radiation and quantum mechanics.)

The only prerequisites for this course are an inquisitive mind, a willingness to push your intellectual boundaries and a belief in your own ability to learn.

Come join us for an exciting, fun, and challenging adventure!?