Excellent course. Well structured and more importantly kept it clear, simple and to the points. Dr. Arzu has done full justice in delivering the course. Appreciate it.

Good review of simple financial material. Not an in-depth review, but a good refresher of modules that you would have seen in your MS Finance or MBA Finance.

Great course to get an introduction to the workings of the financial market. Designed in a way that makes it possible for anyone to comprehend the matter.

Short and well elaborated course! Need for further do your own research for maximum benefit!

I would like to rate 5 stars but the math is a problem, some people has no time to learn math formulas and spend so much time calculating things, maybe some alternatives like excel would fix that issue.

Thank you, for this beaultiful course <3

The teaching staff should pay more attention to discussion forums. They appear to be abandoned.

Good for a refresher course for me

The course explains some basic concepts regarding financial markets. The discussion part is very interesting, but not so much for the calculation part.

Some of the calculations are pretty hard to perform, and it takes quite a jump from the lecture to solving the practise problems. A lot of the in-class whether-you-are-dreaming quizzes are pretty disturbing. The course can improve by adding more discussions and lessen the calculation part (or probably teach us how to use financial calculator)

Good basics with not overwhelming details, yet giving an understanding of major mathematical mechanism connected with financial instruments. I was missing a more structured content and path and the mistakes in some excercises/practice quizes or their answers were disturbing - it should not be the case

Practice quizzes a little difficult relative to the materials and examples presented

very inconsistent with ease at the end and difficult beginning of the course. lots of wasted time for formulas which never been used in real life and manual calculation. not university course for sure by knowledge. cheap: all articles by Dr O asking for subscription, not good. If its part of the course add it for free, tons of information in inet which is free.

sorry

If you buy a course or you pay for online education, you would expect updated, correct, and well-structured content. There are several reasons why this course get's only 1 star: - There are errors in the "calculations" which have not been corrected for 4 years (many students criticized that in the notes) - There are no slides with correctly defined formulas but the lecturer writes them down with inconsistent variables and explains everything on the go instead of giving some definitions and background information - as many students wrote in the forum, I also had to look stuff up on Investopedia. - The point before makes it very hard for beginners. I have a degree in business information systems and just had to look up some correct formulas on Investopedia as it was not correctly written by the lecturer. For people who are new to finance, this will be a hard one. They have literally no idea what the lecturer is talking about (also stated in the forum). - The voice of the lecturer is just too squeaky for me and I can't listen to that for hours

Summary: I canceled the course and took another one which was way better structured, easier to follow, and way more entertaining.

This course is horrible. I was expecting to acquire some finance basic skills before starting my first finance course in uni, but this has done little for me. I'm okay with the fact that no one is answering learners' questions on the discussion forum because there could be no obligation for Rice University to do so, but the content itself is absolute disappointment.

Despite her spectacular skills on writing in mirror, the lecturer jumps around concepts too quickly and I often have to find certain information on google, as these are not being covered in videos but will appear on quizzes, which is really frustrating and annoying. She probably thought she had explained the concepts well by using synonyms. For example, the slides say this is a conventional way, and she'll say 'so it's typical, it is what it is, right?'. Most of the time, she doesn't tell us what par values, market values and face values are. I get that this could be quite elementary, but as a student who haven't learnt anything about Finance, this course has done nothing -- Googling is probably more efficient and helpful than this cramped content. Hence the 1 star.

This was intended as a refresher. It was not worth more than the time it should take someone to read this review, sadly.

It was taught so poorly, that I am less confident than when I began, and wonder (aloud) if Rice consider this to be a marketing or a demarketing exercise.

Key concepts are introduced by a teacher not only stumbling over the introduction of the concepts leading to fundamental financial equations, but presenting erroneous formulas!

INTRODUCED! You only have the opportunity to make a first impression once.

Disheartening for a teacher by training to see the antithesis of the desired outcome as the initial model of these concepts.

Particularly given that it would have been all of about an hour to "re-shoot" the episodic confusion from the lecturer.

I proceed with Rice quite tentatively following this course, intending to cherry pick learning tasks, effectively further diminishing the value proposition of such courses.

They are way too many mistakes in this course, some of them still haven't been corrected 6 years after the initial launch of the class. The material is starting to be really outdated with articles dating back to 2015 / 2016. Some of the material in some of the quizzes isn't covered in the lessons or in one case, is covered in the following week lessons. I don't understand how this course is still on Coursera. This is by far the worst course I have taken on this platform and seeing its quality made me look at other platforms such as EdX. Also the course's forum is inundated with spam. I've notified Coursera but they clearly failed to fix the problem.

A week in and there have already been several mistakes in the lectures. Very uninspiring.

This is an excellent course. Dr Arzu O is one of the best instructors. She designed the course in a very thoughtful manner. Her explanation style is very accurate and simple. I am an active investor in equity market, but don't have strong financial base. I have taken this course to learn more about financial markets and the course content very well satisfied my expectation. Practice Quiz and Examples helped me to understand the course content in a better way and encouraged me to read more through some online material. Taking online course in Coursera also was a very positive experience. I have got mroe than what I expected from this course. 5/5 from Me.

-Tapan Shah

An immensely informative 4 - 5-week crash course into the world of Financial Markets and Instruments. Kudos to Professor Arzu for keeping it engaging, providing real-world examples and for the overall course design. This course has some algebra thrown in (one has solve for 'x' multiple times) and gets the participant to really work on solving questions in the practice quizzes and graded assessments. If you are new to the world of Financial Markets and investing and want to dive in - this is your start!

Very good overview with basic quantitative methods and analysis. Good for beginners. Although many of the methods are calculated automatically in brokers like Schwab, they are still useful in brushing up quantitative skills. The theory and more humanities oriented side of the course is also informative. I did retail forex trading and was familiar with many terms, but I was also introduced to new processes that I was unaware of. Overall the course was very good and worth a look.

Truly amazing... comprehensive and exhaustive study material with unparalleled teaching expertise of Prof. Arzu. I am really thankful to the creators of this course and to the Rice university as well for bringing quality education at our door steps. At last I would say this is really helpful for those looking to make a career in Investment banking because for me I'll be pursuing CFA by feb of 2018 thus this course will go a long way.

Impressive Professor Arzu Ozoguz (*****), one of the best I have seen in the online courses that I have taken. She is engaging, knowledgable, clear communicator with impressive use of visuals . The course is also very well structured and gives a great grounding to start understanding the ever complicated world of finance. Looking forward to next lectures from Rice University and Professor Arzu Ozoguz

I appreciate Dr. O for her enthusiasm and for being bubbly in her instructions. Her insights and teaching style makes a difficult course like this ( in terms of heaviness of concepts ) feel so bearable. Her warmth and passion in her teaching can really be felt even on this video. Thanks for sharing your wisdom. I now feel more confident compare to myself before undergoing this course.

Great course which covers the Basics of all the Financial Instruments and also with practical examples. Displays the roles of Market Players in the Financial Market with new trends in Securities Trading and also good to understand the Trading and Investment mechanism with emphasis on Margin Transactions. Overall a great course to get knowledge and certification.

Very nice introduction, I advice the new student to make some extra research to understand better the topic. And I advice the admin of the course to take out the quiz in the middle of the video, for me where difficult to follow the lesson with them. As an overall I would advice it, because make me understand better the financial market.

Very well conducted course that helped me answer a lot of my own questions. Like why do bond prices fall when yield increases. Or what do they mean by having a long call position.

Would recommend this course to anyone seriously interested in understanding how the components of a modern portfolio works. Thank you! for this course.