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How do traders operate in global markets that are still feeling the after-effects of the 2008 financial meltdown? With an increased focus on risk management and compliance, global traders need to be agile, analytic and adaptive in order to succeed.
There is no doubt that successful traders earn the highest wages in the already well-salaried financial sector, so traders need to be ruthless in order to prove their worth to their bank, hedge-fund or utilities employer. A detailed knowledge of global markets, an ability to negotiate risk and an eye for a trade are therefore essential skills and talents for a trader.
MSc Finance and Global Trading aims to develop future traders and prepare you for a successful career in the financial services sector. This specialist course will equip you with the skills to take on a trading floor by exposing you to financial modelling, risk management systems and big data analytics.
You will be able to put your skills into practice by simulating what you learn in the classroom on our virtual trading floor, which feeds industry standard Bloomberg financial data, allowing you to execute commands to develop your understanding of financial trades before you start to build your own trading portfolio.
You will master areas such as:
trading strategies
risk and money management
trader analytics
portfolio management and empirical methods in finance
equities, FX, commodities and bonds markets
MSc Finance and Global Trading is taught at Essex Business School, ranked 25th in the UK for research quality (TGUG 2019). Our students and staff join us from all over the world and our teaching is grounded in contemporary issues and professional practice, supported by industry-standard facilities.
Why we're great.
We work with City traders to present you with real-life risk situations in order for you to hone your trading skills
Our Bloomberg Financial Market Labs provide hands-on experience of dealing in stocks and securities
We are one of the largest and most respected finance departments in the UK
Our expert staff
By joining MSc Finance and Global Trading you join one of the UK’s largest finance groups, with a team of experts in an enormous range specialisms. You will be exposed to disciplines including: data analytics, global trading, risk management, investment banking, financial management, and more. Even if these are not part of your core programme, you will benefit from the diversity of interests that reflect the breadth of contemporary banking and finance issues facing organisations today.
Our lecturers have presented their work at the likes of the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve and are recognised for being at the forefront of research in:
business ethics and corporate social responsibility
financial data analytics
corporate social responsibility
organisation studies
leadership and strategy
finance and banking
risk management
international management
Not only are you taught by experts with both academic and industry experience, but input from City-based industry leaders gives this course a thorough grounding in contemporary financial practice. Our school is also home to Essex Finance Centre.
Specialist facilities
Our Colchester home is an example of our dedication to sustainable and ethical business practices. Its design is both environmentally friendly and architecturally stunning, with a winter garden and sun terrace contributing to the building’s own micro-climate and providing a tranquil environment for group working and socialising. Our Bonds café is located on site, making a great space for reviewing course notes before lectures.
Our virtual trading floor, complete with Bloomberg Financial Market Labs, enables you to practise dealing stocks and securities using industry-standard equipment. You can also benefit from our study skills workshops, designed to help you excel in your academic work.
Our building is also located on the University’s Knowledge Gateway, providing potential opportunities to network with inspiring SMEs who locate their businesses on our Colchester Campus.
Your future
Essex Business School is helping to create the business leaders of the future; those who are creative, innovative and ethically aware. In 2017, 80% of our postgraduate taught students were in professional employment or further study within six months of graduating (DLHE 2017).
Many of our graduates enjoy careers in financial analysis, management, public administration and accountancy at some of the world’s most well-known organisations and exciting SMEs, including:
Groupon
KPMG Group
Right Freight Pvt Ltc
Copal Partners
Capital Markets Intelligence, a financial publisher
Credit Data Research, a business funder
Many now also run their own growing businesses, including international business incubator 0100Ventures and entrepreneurship website SlovakSTARTUP.
MSc Finance and Global Trading students can also take advantage of the services offered by the Student Development Team, including: careers advice; work experience; internships; placements; and voluntary opportunities.
The firm in which I work is a hedge fund company, based in London and New York. My position is a junior position and, since the company is a small firm, I have the great advantage to work closely with my supervisor and the COO.
I work in the operation and finance sectors of the company so my tasks are different and vary from small logistic tasks to more complex and finance-related ones like planning the cash forecast dealing with the leverage facility. Of course, not all of the tasks I do are fully under my responsibility since I have been working there for a month and a half but my supervisor has started to give me the entire responsibility for some relevant tasks. For example, the first task I do autonomously in the morning is the cash check, whereby monitoring that the custodian on our bank accounts do correctly what we asked to do and also that all of the changes and fees we pay are scheduled and executed smoothly and, in case they don't, sort the issue out.
I can honestly state that my MSc in Financial Engineering and Risk Management at the University of Essex gave me all the knowledge and tools I needed and I still need to face the quite complex word of the hedge funds.
Ludovico Luce, MSc Financial Engineering and Risk Management 2019 graduate
Entry requirements
UK entry requirements
A 2:2 degree, or international equivalent, in a numerate discipline such as: Economics, Finance, Mathematics, Statistics, Science or Engineering.
Your Degree should contain at least one module relating to Economics or Finance for example: Mathematics (calculus), quantitative finance/methods or Econometrics (probability, statistics). With a score of 50% in this module.
International & EU entry requirements
We accept a wide range of qualifications from applicants studying in the EU and other countries. Get in touch with any questions you may have about the qualifications we accept. Remember to tell us about the qualifications you have already completed or are currently taking.
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English language requirements
If English is not your first language, we require IELTS 6.5 overall with a minimum component score of 5.5
Additional Notes
The University uses academic selection criteria to determine an applicant’s ability to successfully complete a course at the University of Essex. Where appropriate, we may ask for specific information relating to previous modules studied or work experience.
Structure
Example structure
Most of our courses combine compulsory and optional modules, giving you freedom to pursue your own interests. All of the modules listed below provide an example of what is on offer from the current academic year. Our Programme Specification provides further details of the course structure for the current academic year.
Our research-led teaching is continually evolving to address the latest challenges and breakthroughs in the field, therefore to ensure your course is as relevant and up-to-date as possible your core module structure may be subject to change.
The example structure below is representative of this course if taken full-time. If you choose to study part-time, the modules will be split across 2 years.
Teaching and learning disclaimer
Following the impact of the pandemic, we made changes to our teaching and assessment to ensure our current students could continue with their studies uninterrupted and safely. These changes included courses being taught through blended delivery, normally including some face-to-face teaching, online provision, or a combination of both across the year.
The teaching and assessment methods listed show what is currently planned for 2021 entry; changes may be necessary if, by the beginning of this course, we need to adapt the way we’re delivering them due to the external environment, and to allow you to continue to receive the best education possible safely and seamlessly.
Master the pricing of financial derivatives and their use for hedging financial risks. You study the basics of futures and options, analyse the Black-Scholes and binomial option pricing models, and consider various numerical techniques for pricing financial derivatives. Futures and options are then utilised in the context of hedging financial risks, and you are introduced to the concept of volatility trading and the treatment of volatility as an asset class.
Understand the process of portfolio management. You cover the main concepts such as efficient diversification, managing risk exposures, and the valuation of financial assets that are at the core of managing investment portfolios, and pay special attention to the practicalities of the implementation of these concepts.
Gain theoretical knowledge and a practical understanding of financial markets, trading strategies, risk and money management and trader analytics at the highest level. You study a mix of classroom-based instruction, case studies and practical trading exercises where you trade on real-time simulated global markets through the use of industry-strength proprietary trading software in the trading lab.
Research Methods in Finance: Empirical Methods in Finance
This module equips you with the econometric tools and necessary experience to conduct empirical research in finance. You review statistical and basic econometric models and learn to apply econometric techniques in finance by considering topics such as (G)ARCH models, unit roots and cointegration.
Your dissertation is the culmination of your Masters programme, where you apply the knowledge gained on your course to produce a 10,000 word independent piece of work. You generate an original idea, analyse literature and current knowledge and produce a coherent argument that shows your ability to relate theory to practice. Your dissertation will help you develop vital skills for the workplace, as well as the ability to analyse real problems through an academic lens. You're assigned a supervisor for the duration of your project.
Gain a formal introduction to asset pricing theories and empirical findings. You review the fundamental theories of the expected utility, asset pricing kernels, and risk-neutral valuation, covering the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), and linear factor models arising from the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT). You also discuss empirical asset pricing studies.
Discover the concepts and tools that are useful to asset managers who want to use fixed income securities for investing, market-making or speculating. You first study fixed income markets and instruments, before going on to explore basic concepts of bond portfolio management and investigating the quantitative tools used to value bonds and manage bonds' portfolios.
Taught exclusively by leading industry experts, this module offers you a unique opportunity to appreciate the latest developments and issues faced by leading practitioners in the areas of quantitative finance and risk management.
This module offers you a standard introduction of the field of corporate finance at postgraduate level. You consider the classical areas of Modigliani-Miller irrelevance, Taxes and capital structure, Trade-off theory and Pecking order theory of capital structure, before exploring the more modern areas, which are essentially based on contract theory.
Consider the use of modern econometric techniques in the analysis of financial time series. You cover multivariate models for stationary and non-stationary processes, such as Vector Autoregressive models, consider appropriate models for volatility, and study Markov processes and simulation methods used for financial modelling.
Behavioural finance rejects crucial tenets of mainstream finance such as the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) on the basis that agents are less than fully rational, and that arbitrage fails to eliminate mispricing. Instead it identifies market anomalies or regularities such as holiday effects that are at odds with the EMH. You learn to use ideas from cognitive psychology, such as overconfidence, and aspects of imperfect arbitrage to explain these.
The recent financial crisis and credit crunch have demonstrated that risk management was too narrowly defined. In this course you examine the Value at Risk (VAR) measure of financial risk developed in the 1990s, before discussing the new post-crisis Regulatory environment.
This module introduces Matlab, software commonly used in financial organisations and academia to model portfolio construction and solve banking and finance challenges. You learn how to use Matlab programming language to solve financial problems. These may include finding optimal portfolio weights, calculating and simulating derivative prices and implied volatilities, and estimating and simulating GARCH models, amongst others.
Explore the basics of the structure and environment of banking, and selected aspects of the applied economics of the modern banking firm. You study structure-conduct-performance, competition, bank efficiency, regulation, international banking and bank failures and crises.
Analyse the key strategic developments in banking and the main aspects of risk management in modern banks. You are introduced to the concept of shareholder value in banking, the main banking strategies to create shareholder value, the key risks in banking, and the most important tools required to manage bank risks.
Tailor the content of your course to more closely fit your interests and aspirations
Courses focus on practical applications and links with industry
We run an open seminar series
Assessment
Regular assessment is by coursework, presentations, case studies, group work, tests and examinations
Dissertation
You submit a 10,000 word dissertation
Fees and funding
Home/UK fee
£12,410
International fee
£19,380
EU students commencing their course in the 2021-22 academic year will be liable for the International fee.
Fees will increase for each academic year of study.
What's next
Open Days
We hold Open Days for all our applicants throughout the year. Our Colchester Campus events are a great way to find out more about studying at Essex, and give you the chance to:
tour our campus and accommodation
find out answers to your questions about our courses, student finance, graduate employability, student support and more
meet our students and staff
If the dates of our organised events aren’t suitable for you, feel free to get in touch by emailing tours@essex.ac.uk and we’ll arrange an individual campus tour for you.
We aim to respond to applications within two weeks. If we are able to offer you a place, you will be contacted via email.
For information on our deadline to apply for this course, please see our ‘how to apply’ information.
Visit Colchester Campus
Home to 15,000 students from more than 130 countries, our Colchester Campus is the largest of our three sites, making us one of the most internationally diverse campuses on the planet - we like to think of ourselves as the world in one place.
The Campus is set within 200 acres of beautiful parkland, located two miles from the historic town centre of Colchester – England's oldest recorded town. Our Colchester Campus is also easily reached from London and Stansted Airport in under one hour.
If you live too far away to come to Essex (or have a busy lifestyle), no problem. Our 360 degree virtual tour allows you to explore the Colchester Campus from the comfort of your home. Check out our accommodation options, facilities and social spaces.
Exhibitions
Our staff travel the world to speak to people about the courses on offer at Essex. Take a look at our list of exhibition dates to see if we’ll be near you in the future.
At Essex we pride ourselves on being a welcoming and inclusive student community. We offer a wide range of support to individuals and groups of student members who may have specific requirements, interests or responsibilities.
The University makes every effort to ensure that this information on its programme specification is accurate and up-to-date. Exceptionally it can be necessary to make changes, for example to courses, facilities or fees. Examples of such reasons might include, but are not limited to: strikes, other industrial action, staff illness, severe weather, fire, civil commotion, riot, invasion, terrorist attack or threat of terrorist attack (whether declared or not), natural disaster, restrictions imposed by government or public authorities, epidemic or pandemic disease, failure of public utilities or transport systems or the withdrawal/reduction of funding. Changes to courses may for example consist of variations to the content and method of delivery of programmes, courses and other services, to discontinue programmes, courses and other services and to merge or combine programmes or courses. The University will endeavour to keep such changes to a minimum, and will also keep students informed appropriately by updating our programme specifications.
The full Procedures, Rules and Regulations of the University governing how it operates are set out in the Charter, Statutes and
Ordinances and in the University Regulations, Policy and Procedures.
Ask us a question
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