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I was really hyped for this course and kept thinking about taking it for about a year. I read a review about 6 months ago that recommends the Finance and capital markets course on Khan Academy and I did watch a good chunk of the videos there and made notes as well, before I decided to finally purchase the course on Coursera. Overall it's a really good course. Robert Shiller is just such a charismatic and passionate professor and I love listening to him, the assignments were very fair and the content very interesting. I really love how Shiller doesn't just teach you the financial theory, but also its societal implications. Finance is not just about money, but about getting things done. This is such a refreshing and unique perspective - and I love it! However it's also not a perfect course. I agree with another review that this course is very US-centric. This should come as no surprise, because this is a Yale course. Finance is very tightly regulated by all governments on Earth (each country will thus have different specifics) and I think that learning about the financial markets in the US makes the most sense, because the US is the most advanced in this field. However you do lose a bit of your motivation, when the assignment questions ask some specific things about financial history or companies from the US. My only other complaint would be that some terms are not defined or explained well in the course. While I was taking notes from the course, I often had to check the definitions on Investopedia (for example the definition of a Beta). These definitions become very important later on in the assignments. I think that Khan Academy does this better - because Khan assumes that you don't know anything and he explains things very intuitively. So just like another reviewer I can really recommend the Finance and capital markets course on Khan Academy (it's free ^^) in tandem with Financial Markets by Robert Shiller. In conclusion, if you're looking for a (beginner) finance course on Coursera, then this is the best course you can take, but as most things it isn't perfect.

This course is absolutely not for beginners, I would know, I'm a beginner. I have no background in economics or finance, and my math was rusty at best (had to brush up on my probabilities). I'm currently on week 3, and I will say it takes me usually 1 to 2 hours to get through some of the 11- and 8-minute videos. The first week alone I spent 6 hours a day for 5 days just getting through the information. Let me explain, if you want to actually understand how the topics in future videos relate to the ones you're watching now, Investopedia, Google, and random undergraduate papers on the internet will become your best friends. Finance at first seems like a jumble of models that vaguely overlap, but you have to actually dive into the concepts and understand the maths and economics behind them to see how they relate to one another. CAPM was barely mentioned in week 1 and 2, but had I not taken 3 days to give myself a crash course on CAPM, nothing in week 1 and 2 would have made any sense at all and moving forward I wouldn't have understood how future formulas related to past concepts. This week I've spent 5 hours teaching myself how bonds relate to the discount rate we see in the DDM/GGM/ and PDV models, how yield and interest/ central bank policy are related, and what coupon rates are. This was to understand an 11-minute video, one of 8, in the first half of week 3. Be prepared. Gird your loins. If you want to get the most out of this course, use it predominantly as a template to direct you to new topics that you can research on your own, if you do this I promise you will learn more in 8 weeks than you could possibly imagine.

Excelente curso com visão genérica, histórica e de cases. Achei falta de exemplos mais recentes, mas entendo isso se deve por ser parte de um curso MBA, já gravado anteriormente. Pelo pouco contato, mesmo que online, pude perceber o por quê do altíssimo conceito da Yale University, no contexto mundial de negócios. Assim que for possível, gostaria de poder cursar outros temas de forma presencial, e caso não seja viável, online já é um bom caminho. Obrigado pela oportunidade de realizar um sonho (mesmo que online e grátis), de nesta fase da vida (estou com 62 anos de idade), poder além de adquirir ótimos conhecimentos dos mercados financeiros, poder colocar em meu Curriculum Vitae profissional, um certificado internacional da Yale University. Metas futuras: *Continuar estudos na área financeira e de investimentos. *Após aposentadoria, me dedicar exclusivamente à atividades profissionais como consultor financeiro (certificação CEA do Brasil e outras); * De forma filantrópica, ser educador financeiro em comunidades, escolas, igrejas e amigos. FIM