Long/short, event, relative-value, macro … Unpack the strategy zoo.

• Key features: leverage, shorting, derivatives and flexible mandates.
• Direct vs. fund-of-funds vs. liquid-alt wrappers.
• Risk/return drivers, common draw-downs and true diversification worth.

You’ll finish able to decode any hedge-fund pitch-book in under five minutes.

Timber, farmland, and commodities join the alternatives toolkit.

• Contrast land-based investments (farmland, timberland) with commodity futures rolls.
• Dive into supply-and-demand drivers, storage costs and seasonality.
• Explore inflation-hedging properties and where natural resources fit alongside real estate in the real-asset bucket.

Perfect if you’ve ever wondered why soybeans and gold dance to verydifferent macro tunes.

Bricks, mortar & bridges. Compare the cash-flow engines ofincome-producing property and long-lived infrastructure projects.

• Equity vs. debt vs. REIT structures for property exposure.
• Greenfield, brownfield and secondary-stage infrastructure—how risk and return step down each stage.
• Inflation linkage, GDP sensitivity and diversification traits of each sub-asset.

After this module you’ll know why toll roads trade like bonds and officesbehave like equities.

From start-ups to leveraged buy-outs. Map the spectrum ofprivate equity (VC, growth, buy-out) and private debt (direct lending,mezzanine, distressed).

• Key terms: committed vs. called capital, exit routes, GP/LP economics.
• Risk–return expectations and why valuation lags can mask volatility.
• Diversification benefits and where private capital slots into a broader portfolio.

Essential listening before you quote IRRs at networking drinks.

Measuring performance is trickier here. Longer life-cycles,irregular cash flows, leverage and complex fees mean IRR and MOIC trump simpletime-weighted returns.

• See capital commitment → deployment → distribution phases and the infamous J-curve.
• Work through fee waterfalls: management, incentive, hurdles, high-water marks, clawbacks.
• Calculate before- and after-fee returns and spot survivorship bias when benchmarking.

You’ll learn why “headline” numbers can mislead—and how to adjust them.

Why alternatives? They promise higher expected returns andlower correlations—but at the cost of liquidity, longer holding periods andspecialised know-how. This module:

• Distils the three big categories — private capital, real assets and hedge funds.
• Compares fund, co-investment and direct routes, showing how control, fees and effort shift across methods.
• Explains ownership & compensation structures (limited partnerships, trusts, LLCs) and why performance-based fees align managers and investors.

The perfect launch-pad for everything that follows.

Construct a simple up/down binomial tree to price a European call. Learn risk-neutralprobabilities, replicate pay-offs with ∆-hedged portfolios, and generalise theframework for any derivative where pay-off depends on one period of pricemovement.

Employ put–call parity to replicate forwards, build collars, and decompose equityvalue into debt + option components. Extend to forward parity for off-marketstrikes and see how corporate finance uses these identities.

Break option value into intrinsic and time components, test moneyness, andstudy six core inputs (spot, strike, time, rate, volatility, income). Use arbitrage andreplication arguments to bound fair prices before jumping into models later.

View a plain-vanilla swap as a strip of forward contracts: solve for the par swaprate that sets initial value to zero, then track mark-to-market gains as rates move.Covers fixed-for-float interest swaps, currency swaps and the impact of clearing.