IIMA - Course Catalogue
Courses
Back
Programme
PGP
Term
V
Academic Year
2021-22
Course title
Applied Value Investing
Area
Finance and Accounting
Credits
0.75
Instructor(s)
Prof. A K Laha,
Prof. Abhiman Das
Course Description & Objectives
Introduction:
This course will help students learn a practitioner’s perspective on bottom-up, value-oriented, long-only, long-term, active investing in stocks.
The journey towards becoming a good investor is a life-long one, and this course is only a beginning. Through the course, students will be exposed to the process of developing investment hypotheses, conducting diligence on the business and management team, performing financial analysis, making financial forecasts, and assessing buying prices for a variety of companies.
The course can conceptually be split into 3 parts, which build on each other:
- Building the toolkit: Developing hypotheses, assessing business and management quality, financial analysis, and forecasting (please see sessions 1 to 9 below)
- Applying the toolkit: Frameworks for evaluating and investing in different types of businesses (sessions 10 to 12)
- Managing a portfolio: Moving beyond researching individual stocks towards constructing and maintaining a portfolio (session 13 to 15)
Objectives:
The objectives of the course are: (a) helping students build the technical and psychological tool kit required to become long-term investors, and (b) aiding the development of sound investment judgement.
The course is most relevant to students with an interest in long-term investing in public or private companies. In addition, the course may also benefit students who have an interest in: (a) advising senior management of companies on strategic choices / capital allocation decisions or (b) starting and / or building durable companies.
Pedagogy
The course will use a combination of: (a) reading material (b) lectures and discussions, (c) exercises, (d) an individual written exam, and (e) a group project.
Reading material will be shared prior to class, and the emphasis in class will be on: (i) deepening conceptual understanding of the topic, and (ii) practical application of the lessons learned.
Students who seek greater depth of knowledge and challenge are encouraged to go beyond the core reading material for a class, by exploring the optional reading material as well as by taking on optional homework.