The Fundamental of Data-Driven Investment (Coursera)

The Fundamental of Data-Driven Investment (Coursera)

In this course, the instructor will discuss the fundamental analysis of investment using R programming. The course will cover investment analysis topics, but at the same time, make you practice it using R programming. This course's focus is to train you to do the elemental analysis for investment management that you might need to do in your job every day. Additionally, the study note to do using Python programming will be provided.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

The course is designed with the assumption that most students already have a little bit of knowledge in financial economics. Students are expected to have heard about stocks and bonds and balance sheets, earnings, etc., and know the introductory statistics level, such as mean, median, distribution, regression, etc.
The instructor will explain the detail of R programming for beginners. It will be an excellent course for you to improve your programming skills. If you are very good at R programming, it will provide you an excellent opportunity to practice again with finance and investment examples.
Professor Youngju Nielsen creates the course with the assistants of Keonwoo Lim and Jeeun Yuen.

What You Will Learn

  • Build an investment factor model using regression methodology
  • Employ optimization algorithm using R standard library
  • Explain the portfolio performance

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Analyzing Past Returns and Forecasting Future Returns
You will learn how to read stock price time-series data from CSV file and analyze the past return data.
After you understand the past return data, you will determine what impacts stocks' return and make a future return forecasting model using regression.

WEEK 2
Understanding the Risk Using Factors
First of all, you will learn how you can gauge investment strategy using backtesting.
You learned the first component of investment strategy, returns, in the first week. You will expand your study to assessing investment risks. To understand stocks' risks, you will calculate covariance and correlation matrix using historical time-series stock return data. You will extend this to market factor and three-factor models to understand the risk you are facing with your investment. Finally, you will calculate factor exposure using a 3-factor model from week 2 and separate common factor risk and idiosyncratic risk of the stock.

WEEK 3
Portfolio Analysis and Optimization
In this week, This week, you will download various global ETFs and make global asset allocation portfolio using mean-variance optimization.

WEEK 4
Performance Analysis
You will learn about various portfolios other than a mean-variance optimized portfolio. Additionally, you will add a constraint to your portfolio optimization. In reality, you might need to consider more than volatility measured by return standard deviation. You will grasp the concepts of VaR, maximum drawdowns and CvaR, etc.

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Design Computing: 3D Modeling in Rhinoceros with Python/Rhinoscript (Coursera) Coursera
University of Michigan

Design Computing: 3D Modeling in Rhinoceros with Python/Rhinoscript (Coursera)

Why should a designer learn to code? As our world is increasingly impacted by the use of algorithms, designers must learn how to use and create design computing programs. Designers must go beyond the narrowly focused use of computers in the automation of simple drafting/modeling tasks and instead explore the extraordinary potential digitalization holds for design culture/practice.

Sep 14th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Information Theory (Coursera) Coursera
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Information Theory (Coursera)

At the completion of this course, the student should be able to: demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of information theory; appreciate the notion of fundamental limits in communication systems and more generally all systems; develop deeper understanding of communication systems; apply the concepts of information theory to various disciplines in information science.

Sep 7th 2026
13-24 Weeks
Practical Steps for Building Fair AI Algorithms (Coursera) Coursera
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

Practical Steps for Building Fair AI Algorithms (Coursera)

Algorithms increasingly help make high-stakes decisions in healthcare, criminal justice, hiring, and other important areas. This makes it essential that these algorithms be fair, but recent years have shown the many ways algorithms can have biases by age, gender, nationality, race, and other attributes. This course will teach you ten practical principles for designing fair algorithms. It will emphasize real-world relevance via concrete takeaways from case studies of modern algorithms, including those in criminal justice, healthcare, and large language models like ChatGPT. You will come away with an understanding of the basic rules to follow when trying to design fair algorithms, and assess algorithms for fairness.

Sep 14th 2026
4 Weeks
Big Data Analysis with Scala and Spark (Coursera) Coursera
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Big Data Analysis with Scala and Spark (Coursera)

Manipulating big data distributed over a cluster using functional concepts is rampant in industry, and is arguably one of the first widespread industrial uses of functional ideas. This is evidenced by the popularity of MapReduce and Hadoop, and most recently Apache Spark, a fast, in-memory distributed collections framework written in Scala. In this course, we'll see how the data parallel paradigm can be extended to the distributed case, using Spark throughout.

Sep 14th 2026
4 Weeks
Comparing Genes, Proteins, and Genomes (Bioinformatics III) (Coursera) Coursera
University of California, San Diego

Comparing Genes, Proteins, and Genomes (Bioinformatics III) (Coursera)

Once we have sequenced genomes in the previous course, we would like to compare them to determine how species have evolved and what makes them different. In the first half of the course, we will compare two short biological sequences, such as genes (i.e., short sequences of DNA) or proteins. We will encounter a powerful algorithmic tool called dynamic programming that will help us determine the number of mutations that have separated the two genes/proteins.

Sep 14th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Digital Signal Processing 4: Applications (Coursera) Coursera
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Digital Signal Processing 4: Applications (Coursera)

Digital Signal Processing is the branch of engineering that, in the space of just a few decades, has enabled unprecedented levels of interpersonal communication and of on-demand entertainment. By reworking the principles of electronics, telecommunication and computer science into a unifying paradigm, DSP is a the heart of the digital revolution that brought us CDs, DVDs, MP3 players, mobile phones and countless other devices.

Sep 14th 2026
3 Weeks
Selenium WebDriver with Python (Coursera) Coursera
Whizlabs

Selenium WebDriver with Python (Coursera)

“Selenium WebDriver with Python” is a foundational course that aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of Selenium and its components. It also helps in understanding how Selenium WebDriver Operates. This course begins by demonstrating an environment setup for Selenium WebDriver with Python. A brief description of locating Web elements and web Interactions is provided in this course. This course covers an overview of testing frameworks with Selenium WebDriver. Some advanced topics such as Handling Popup, Alerts, Multiple Browser Tabs, Mouse and Keyboard interactions are also highlighted in this course.

Sep 14th 2026
3 Weeks
Audio Signal Processing for Music Applications (Coursera) Coursera
Stanford University,Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Audio Signal Processing for Music Applications (Coursera)

In this course you will learn about audio signal processing methodologies that are specific for music and of use in real applications. We focus on the spectral processing techniques of relevance for the description and transformation of sounds, developing the basic theoretical and practical knowledge with which to analyze, synthesize, transform and describe audio signals in the context of music applications.

Sep 14th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Uso de bases de datos con Python (Coursera) Coursera
University of Michigan

Uso de bases de datos con Python (Coursera)

Este curso presentará a los estudiantes los conceptos básicos del lenguaje de consulta estructurado (Structured Query Language, SQL), así como el diseño básico de bases de datos para almacenar datos como parte de una iniciativa de varios pasos para recopilar, analizar y procesar datos. El curso utilizará SQLite3 como base de datos. También crearemos rastreadores web y procesos de visualización y recopilación de datos de varios pasos. Utilizaremos la biblioteca D3.js para realizar la visualización básica de datos.

Sep 14th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Introduction to Open Source Application Development (Coursera) Coursera
Illinois Tech

Introduction to Open Source Application Development (Coursera)

This course introduces basic concepts of systems programming using a modern open source language. You will learn to apply basic programming concepts toward solving problems, writing pseudocode, working with and effectively using basic data types, abstract data types, control structures, code modularization and arrays. You will learn to detect errors, work with variables and loops, and discover how functions, methods, and operators work with different data types. You will also be introduced to the object paradigm including classes, inheritance, and polymorphism.

Sep 14th 2026
5-12 Weeks