Portfolio Management 

Key Learning Objectives

• Gain a deep understanding of the investment management industry and the risk and returns of various asset classes, such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and ETFs.

• Learn how to combine different assets together to maximize the return on your investment and minimize its risk.

• Discover the impact of the latest trends, such as artificial intelligence, on asset management.

• Obtain key practical insights on investment strategies from case discussions, investment professionals, and networking.

Guest Speakers

• Prior session: Chicago Booth alumnus King Leung, Global Head of Financial Services, Fintech & Sustainability at Invest Hong Kong, will share the latest innovations in Hong Kong's financial services sector.

• 2025 guest speakers to be announced.

Why Chicago Booth?
One unquestioned strength of Chicago Booth is our world-renowned faculty. A diverse group of more than 200 preeminent business scholars, our faculty have been shaping education since we opened our doors in 1898. Eleven Booth scholars—five of whom are currently teaching—have won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

Chicago Booth faculty collaborate and consult with firms, serve on corporate boards, start their own companies, and are sought out for their award-winning research and renowned analyses. World leaders, media outlets, and top global companies regularly turn to our faculty members for their expertise and insights. When you attend our executive education programs, you’ll learn from the same professors who teach in our MBA program, as well as industry leaders—receiving a distinctive mix of theory and real-world applications you can enact immediately.

Our Global Locations
We are the first and only US business school with permanent campuses in cities on three continents—Chicago, London, and Hong Kong. This program includes an offering at each of our global campuses.

This course has been approved for 29 hours of CIMA^®️, CPWA^®️, CIMC^®️, and RMA^®️ CE credit.

Program faculty, practitioners, and guest speakers are subject to change at the various locations.

• Portfolio managers working at mutual funds, pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, etc.
• Chief investment officers, treasury officers, and risk managers at private corporations, not-for-profits entities, etc. 
• Financial advisors and family wealth management officers 
• High net-worth individuals and other retail investors who manage their own money
• Bankers and employees of insurance companies who need to learn about financial securities
• National governments' treasury and central bank officials involved in financial markets
• Sell-side analysts and other capital market participants who need to better understand the risk and returns of financial securities

Foundations: The Landscape of Investment Assets

• Overview of asset classes and risk/return profiles: Stocks, treasury and corporate bonds, mutual funds, hedge funds, ETFs, real estate, alternative investments, pension funds, etc.

Portfolio Allocation - Risk vs. Return Tradeoff

• Examine principles that govern portfolio allocation strategies, focusing on optimizing returns while managing risk exposure

• Practical considerations in portfolio construction, including the role of asset correlation and volatility in shaping risk profiles and return expectations

• Examine the impact of international diversification of portfolios

Diversification and Optimal Portfolio Allocation

• Gain a comprehensive understanding of how to construct diversified portfolios that leverage the principles of the efficient frontier, tangent portfolios, and market equilibrium to optimize investment outcomes

The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM)

• Implications of CAPM—the most famous benchmark for asset returns—and its limitations

• Security Market Line, the estimation of betas, and their implications for portfolio allocation

Multi-factor Models

• General Market Model as well as three, four, and five-factor models

Size, Value, and Momentum

• Value vs. growth stocks, small caps vs. large caps, and momentum portfolios

• Learn rational and behavioral explanations of anomalies

Fixed Income Portfolio Management

• How do fixed-income portfolios fit with equity investments? Explore optimal fixed income allocation in various scenarios.

• Examine the betas and interest rate risk of bond portfolios.

Active Asset Management

• Understand the complexities and nuances of active asset management, such as quant investing, information ratios, skill, diversification, efficiency, data mining, and costs.

Trends in Investing

• Examine trends in investing including competition, factor investing, investing beyond returns, and fee compression

Alphas and Optimal Asset Allocation

• The relation between “alphas,” Sharpe ratios, information ratios, and other similar performance measures

• Analyze the impact of “alpha” estimation on optimal portfolio allocation to provide the full picture of the trade-off between risk and returns in strategic asset allocation

Big Data, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence in Asset Management

• Examine AI, including the 'why', 'what', and 'when' behind machine-learning models and natural language processing

• Apply big data to event forecasting

Fundamental Indexing and Smart Beta Investing

• The foundation of Smart Beta investing and performance

• Equal weighting versus value weighting and dynamic factor rotation

The curriculum is tailored regionally, and subject to change. 

From a solid grounding in fundamentals to the latest trends in active management, this course exceeded my expectations. I can’t wait to start applying what I’ve learned. Dr. Veronesi teaches with passion, energy, and humor. I loved every minute!

—Jim Stawicki, President, Stawicki Associates Brand Management

Contemporary learning at its best.

—Tumi Tiyamiyu, Portfolio Director, Prime Holdings

I gained an understanding of the tools for constructing and managing a portfolio – exactly what I came for.

The program was a very good mix between theory and practice. I learned new skills I’ll use for a lifetime.