Before reading on, this post won't be about anything relating to applying finance for stock picking or anything related to that area.

Instead I will talk about how financial risk management is taught in Applied Finance as opposed to General Finance.

More specifically this is from MQ but could be the same at other universities.

Anyway I am posting this because this is one of the toughest subjects I have done in a uni degree and probably the most confusing at the same time.

This is the textbook on the subject of Financial risk management.

"Risk Management and Financial Institutions, 6th Edition" - https://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/~hull/riskmanout/rmcontents.htm

So someone here talked about short selling in another post

This subject teaches you that and much much more as you can see above.

Plus you learn about

• Valuing tail risk (Expected shortfall and Value at Risk etc..). This looks at what if you hold a portfolio of assets and you calculate risk without factoring you have some asset that can move against you very quickly.
• Different types of risk (Capital, Liquidity, Operational), Asset risk on not just stocks, but even bonds. Plus pricing corporate bonds etc. etc...
• Building financial models. Historical simulations using different approaches (GARCH, MonteCarlo, Exponential Weighted Moving average)
• Modelling and hedging risk (particularly if you have short positions or you are writing options)
• Regulation (BASEL) and role of risk free assets such as Gold, cash and treasuries in Basel
• CVA (Credit Value Adjustment) DVA (Debt Value Adjustment) ??
• etc...

I am impressed the lecturer got through about 80% of the book and all the complex math concepts in 5 months but that is in the absence of going through problems and questions that could be asked in assessments or encountered in RL. Not to mention sneaking a few questions from other subjects and not covering the solving process in the lectures. I already raised the issue of the "overload" to the subject convenor but given uni budgets are constrained, I doubt they will consider splitting the subject in two parts.

Although I did better than expected in this subject (ie: I did much better than a "Pass"), I came out on the other side of this subject feeling more "jaded" about Finance than ever.

More importantly I'm finding that the domains of Applied versus General Finance are completely different, with the Applied side more concentrated on the "maths of counting cards" to build financial models rather than company fundamentals which is frequently posted here at Strawman

I think if you are good at "counting cards" or like probability in general and how it applies to pricing and hedging derivatives, futures, forwards etc..., then maybe Applied finance or Actuarial studies is your cup of tea?

Otherwise I would save the money and prestige, stick with a Bachelor degree that majors in Finance

I'm probably one notch down from ever getting a job in finance now after this rant! But at least I learnt more cool excel skills.

Incidentally the next subject I need to do is called "Issues in Applied Finance" before I finally finish the degree.

Let me know your thoughts.