This Fundamentals of Fund Management training course is designed to cover the following key areas:

Understanding the fundamentals of investment

• Investors: their requirements and objectives
• Understanding risk, diversification and inflation
• Examining the investment assets

Understanding the fund management process

• The theories behind fund management
• Role and responsibilities of fund managers
• Planning for optimal portfolio returns
• Implementing strategies to maximise performance
• Business models changes due to the credit problems and regulatory changes
• Effective management for ultimate results
• Controlling the process

Examining types of funds and investment products

• Explaining different types of funds and their characteristics
• Examining investment products and their applications

Linkage between economic activity and investment markets

• The key drivers and government impact
• The business and investment cycles
• Economic growth and recession/depression
• A cyclical approach to investment: exploiting the investment cycles
• Sentiment, excesses and crashes – regulatory response to recent events

Analysing equity fund management styles

• Examining the most common styles fund managers use to achieve their investment objectives
• Small capitalisation style
• Comparing fund management styles

In detail: fixed income fund management

• Styles of bond fund management
• Understanding bonds pricing
• Mastering the concepts of duration & convexity
• Examining bond swapping techniques
• Learning the theory and practice of portfolio switching
• Bond portfolio management

In detail: equity fund management

• Understanding the fundamentals of equity analysis
• Comparing active vs passive equity fund management
• Examining index funding or tracker funds

Examining other types of fund management

• Cash fund management
• Money market funds
• Alternative investment

Asset allocation within the investment decision making process

• Determining clients aims and objectives
• Asset/liability management
• Strategic and tactical asset allocation
• The decision making levels

Understanding modern portfolio theory

• Evolution, insights and applications
• Understanding mean-variance analysis
• The benefits of diversification across portfolios
• Controversies and weaknesses arising from the application of MPT to fund management practice

Investment performance evaluation

• Successfully measuring investment returns
• Risk-adjusted measures to optimise portfolio strategy
• Benchmarks – what are they and when should they be used
• Attribution analysis to ensure effective measurement and control
• The importance of client reporting
• GIPS