Both two instructors are really good, patient, detail-oriented, and knowledgeable. This course is quite useful for you to gain skills in Python and its associated popular packages such as Numpy, Pandas, and Seaborn. Portfolio strategies such as CPPI and LDI are quite important and are introduced fully here. The course however takes a bit long time to finish, if you really want to make the most of it, because you must follow the long-hours labs. But I think it is worthy to spend such great amount of time.

I like the layout of this course and the way VJ laying out his mistakes. Really help a lot for my programming and I am no longer afraid of errors. I also like how the instructor taught about liability-driven investing and how they combine the theory with the lab sessions.

One suggestion is that the course materials can be designed to teach students how they can come up with the functions. I perfectly understand how the function works but I could never come up with the functions myself.

I have taken quite a number of Python courses(for the field of Finance) and none of the previous courses greatly improved my understanding of Python. This course, however, leaves me with nothing but a desire to dive deeper into the beauty of Python and Finance. A million thanks to both instructors for making this learning process enjoyable and interesting. 5 stars for today, for tomorrow, for as long as this course illuminates a clearer path for aspiring financial analysts!

This course is well-organized by the instructors, Dr. Vaidyanathan and Dr. Martellini, for a virtual learning environment.

This course is suitable for three types of audience:

a) required prep for anyone considering a Masters in Financial Engineering or MS in Finance Programs.

b) investment professionals who currently use Excel/VBA, R, or MATLAB , but interested in learning python programming techniques.

c) finance undergraduate students who want to be quants.

This course is very well presented and gives the reader the necessary practical skills. After short theoretical videos, most of the time is spent implementing the models in Python, and gradually building a module of functions used for constructing portfolios and visualising the data. Some of the Python code is not completely elementary so I would advice you to spend a bit more time and code everything yourself line by line and understand what's going on.

Very useful course with state of the art financial theories as well as programming practical use. I learned a lot both in finance (especially Chapter 3 & 4) and in Python in an easy and agreable way. I will be implementing a CCPI strategy in my personal portfolio soon thanks to the very useful edhec risk kit developed during all the session labs. This format is well made and makes it really fun to try and test the code for ourselves, which is rare!

Very educational and challenging course, combining the development of fundamental skills in Python with Investment management practices. When you stumble upon a coding problem, you can be stuck for a while but mostly the forum provides an answer, atlhough some research on the internet is also recommended. Really looking forward to learn about the advanced courses in the specialization. Vijay and Lionel were very pleasant and interesting tutors!

Extremely high quality course with two great instructors.

I would however point out that this might be (very) tough for people without any finance background. The theoretical aspects are explained on a high level only, which may make it difficult for some people to fully grasp what is being done.

I started with only basics in Python and was able to understand all the code. The Lab Sessions with Vijay are very good.

I highly recommend this course.

I am a novice, an individual investor who was intrigued by the complexities of portfolio construction and risk management, This course has helped me grasp the basics and learn the subject with ease. The main highlight is an excellent combination of theoretical concepts and practical lab sessions, which made the learning and the overall program very enjoyable - looking forward to starting the next course on Advance portfolio construction.

Great course!

Vijay is one of the best professor that I have had pleasure to listen to. He does not only explain coding, but also unwraps the ideas which make financial predictions and simulations possible.

Quizzes are very easy, though, and are based on the code developed in class. I would appreciate more challenging assignments.

Nonetheless, I learned a lot and I am very excited about the next class in this specialization.

The course is a great balance between theory and application. The content overall is great. I really enjoyed the emphasis on python implementations of the concepts taught. It is rare to find a course that has good theory AND good coding practices for data analysis. The instructor makes use of the libraries commonly used in industry (I work as a data scientist in a US startup). Highly recommended!

This was an amazing course! The lab sessions are the key - I feel I will have a hard skill to take away from this course and code I can re-use in my career. Vijay in particular is an excellent teacher and makes sure you understand every step of the code. Where I didn't understand something, I posted in the discussion forums and got a really prompt reply that cleared things up. Thank you.

Excellent Course! At the same time, I have a Masters in Finance there where additional topics that I had not covered in such detail in the past while introducing fundamental skills for python in finance in detail. I would suggest to anyone taking this course to have a strong fundamental in finance already as some of the topics can be confusing if you have not seen it in the past.

There is such an incredible amount of useful information in the course. The information is paired with exceptional professors who communicate it extremely effectively. The lab sessions in this course are incredible and serve as a guide to implement techniques learned in the course (and to build on them) on new datasets. Thank you so much for putting this course on Coursera!

Very Helpful. I studied most of the course arguments during an MSc in Finance, but I had not the knowledge to apply them in practice. This course helped me reviewing the basic mechanisms of financial analysis and portfolio construction with real data and eventually gave me a framework to apply them practically with python, which is the real value-added of these lessons.

From the financial point of view the course is excellent, but it also teaches very, very well a bunch of good stuff in python. In fact the main reason I tool this course was to learn how to program financial functions in python and in that sense I can assure this course made an unbelievably good job.

Thanks a lot to Lionel, Vijay and the staff members of the forum.

Excellent course! Finance and portfolio analysis in practice using one of the best and highly approved programming language. Wonderful tutors who combine both theory and practice. Having an MSc in finance, I assure you that this course is a must for who would like to improve her knowledge in portfolio management. Definitely worth your time and effort!

It's a great hands-on course. I've learnt a lot specifically how to refine the stock return statistics with Cornish-Fisher model, how to implement optimal portfolio, and Liability Driven Investing. Thanks a lot to the 2 course Instructors who've made great efforts in designing and delivering the course in such a way that it is easy grasp and follow.

Fantastic hands on course on working with Python and financial information and modelling. Will definitely recommend this course to anyone technically capable and interested in portfolio management. Vijay was an excellent instructor with clear direction and explanations and his "mistakes" were even more insightful as he explained the common gotchas.

Great course all-around. Extensive materials in both the theory and praxis. I really liked the code-along lab sessions (which are 100% bug free) and the exams, as those require you to actually perform calculations instead of just reciting parts of the classwork.

This course teaches a lot more than any other MOOC I have taken thus far on coursera.

Thanks to the instructors Lionel and Vijay and to our peer Emanuele Chini in tests and general support questions.

Great course! fundamental theory is clearly explained by Lionel and Vijay just takes amounts of knowledge down to the earth so it is easy to learn not only Python but the over financial theory about portfolios. Highly recommended!!!

Very good course. Good mix of lectures and lab sessions. Despite having programmed in python and using numpy and pandas in the past, I learned a lot in the lab sessions and really enjoyed the hands on nature of them. I learned ideas that I feel I can actually use for my personal financial planning. Highly recommend doing this course!

I have been doing portfolio risk analysis using GNU R and have been looking for a good introduction to Python. The covered Python content is a great introduction to portfolio construction and analysis tools. Also the balance with the lectures is good. Looking forward to the advanced topics in the next module.

The course is really nice. I have learned many interest thing about python programming and investment management. Especially, the ipywidgets is an impressive tool. The portfolio construction techniques are presented in a very comprehensive way even to somebody who is not familiar with financial analysis

Lionel step by step explanations makes it easy to follow and understand the main idea of the course even though the complexity increased towards the end. With Vijay's guide on analysis with Python, the course is easier to understand. The use of Python makes it easier to create many scenarios.