This course offers the financial theory and quantitative analytical tools necessary for understanding how stock, bond, and option prices are determined, and provides the skills required to make sound investment decisions. The course combines a theoretical framework with applied analysis. Topics covered include: portfolio selection based on mean-variance analysis, models of risk and return (including the CAPM and multifactor models), performance evaluation of mutual funds and hedge funds, market efficiency and the random walk hypothesis, asset pricing anomalies and behavioral finance, derivative security pricing (including options, futures, forwards, and swaps), and the term structure of interest rates.