An investment is the current commitment of money or other resources in exchange for future benefits, i.e., you sacrifice something of value now and expect to benefit from that sacrifice later. Since every investor is concerned about the rate of return (報酬率) he earns and the degree of risk (風險程度) (i.e., uncertainty (不確定性)) he bears when making investment decisions, security markets are so competitive that it is difficult to earn abnormal returns (異常報酬或是超額報酬) when investing securities.
In addition to learning how to estimate the rate of return and the degree of risk of financial assets or portfolios (金融資產或組合), students in the course will also study comprehensive investment-related knowledge, including but not restricted to (1) characteristics of diverse financial securities (金融證券); (2) security valuation methods (證券評價方法) (e.g., DCF, CAPM, APT, macroeconomic or financial statement analysis, etc.) and how to identify over- or under-valued securities; (3) analyzing market efficiency (市場效率性) and using proper fundamental- (基本分析) or technical-analysis (技術分析) trading strategies (交易策略) in markets with different degrees of efficiency; (4) the portfolio theory (投資組合理論) for constructing risk-diversified portfolios.
Understanding the content of this course not only gives you a sense to manage your personal wealth in the future but also builds you a solid foundation for more advanced courses in the finance field.