BFC3241: Equities and Investment Analysis

10% mst - some questions googable. lots of topics werent even covered in the lectures so i have no idea what the fk he was doing with these questions. it pissed a lot of people off.
25% group assignment - very exhausting very long group assignment. its just a lot to do. first 5/6 lectures is basically for the group assignment.
60% exam - fairish? a bit daunting though

ill be honest, for the first half of the unit, i questioned what i actually have learned despite being somewhat engaged in the unit. i felt lacking in knowledge seeing as most of the earlier lecturers were basically how to do your assignment.
in sem 1 2019, the exam was apparently hell and there was a petition with like 200 signatures about the exam. look in stalkerspace for proof. he put in topics that werent covered in the lectures but were on the practice exam. so glad i dodged that bullet as i think he was a bit more lenient this time. there was a question on the practice exam this time round that was exactly the same as the one on the final exam which was perfect because it was math heavy and you could rote learn how to do it. we were also barely exposed to that topic so that saved my ass as it was worth a lot of marks. this unit is poorly run imo and i wonder when jean paul is going to get switched after his poor performance last semester and the stress he put on students. he has seem to have redeemed himself this time round with 43.3% of students getting distinction and higher.

jean-paul rabanal

Yes with sketch answers and some topics in it that werent relevant to this present unit now (sometimes he wouldnt tell us)

2 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture

no

1x 1hr tutorial
1x 2hr lecture

sem 2 2019

d

10% mid-semester test
25% group assignment
5% tutorial participation
60% exam

I found this unit to be a perfect introduction to the third year finance units at Monash. Having only done Foundations of Finance and Corporate Finance 1, I was worried that I would struggle to understand the advanced content that may have relied on other finance units (such as derivatives). Despite this, although there were some references to the Black-Scholes-Merton model (which is covered extensively in Derivatives 1), I found that doing this unit without that prior knowledge was enough to understand what the explanation was trying to tell me about the application of the model.

Also, Paul is an excellent lecturer, and made the course very easy to understand for the parts that he lectured. I'd definitely recommend to do this unit in your second year like I did, if you're interested in a finance elective, as the course was not that challenging to understand and has a lot of real-life applications in the future, particularly with writing an Investment Analysis Report.

- The exam consisted of 6 questions, 4 of which came from the second half of the course from weeks 7-12, with 1 question for weeks 1-3 and 1 question for weeks 4-7. I found this to be reasonably straightforward, although there were some tricks here and there. 2 hrs time was allocated for the exam, which I found to be just enough time to finish all my questions and have a quick skim over my answers. That being said, focusing on Paul's lectures from week 7-12 is crucial to ensuring you do well in the exam, as 2/3 of the exam is dedicated to his content, meaning that if you understand the majority of his content then you should be set for the exam.
Overall, this was a really well-taught unit, and for sure the one that I found to have the best lectures for the semester. The course was not that difficult, although the group assignment took me 3x longer than I had for any other group assignment in the past. That being said, this is a really nice finance elective, and if you started your finance major in 2017 or earlier, I'd definitely recommend it, as the content is not that tricky to get your head around. Although it was only the second time that the unit was taught under the 3rd year standard, it is relatively well-written and prepared such that most students should be able to do relatively well in it. From 2018 onwards it is compulsory for a finance major though in commerce, so be sure to do it straight after BFC2140 (Corporate Finance 1) and BFC2751 (Derivatives 1), to understand its linkage to corp fi and derivatives as much as possible.

- This was where I really found the workload of the unit to be 3rd year standard. Groups of 3-4 students formed in your tutorial session had to write up a 3000 word equity analysis report on a stock from the Healthcare sector, as well as compare it to 2 other peers that had a similar market capitalisation or PE ratio and were in a similar market to your main stock. The choosing of the stocks were a bit tricky, as I was unsure which peers perfectly matched my main stock. This proved to be a partial detriment, as I scored less than I anticipated on the assignment due to stock selection. Also, the workload for this assignment is immense. I had 2 days at the end of the week before the submission date on the Friday, where I stayed up until 2am finalising financial statements and working out calculations for items that had to end up in the final report. Therefore, I would strongly recommend to start as early as possible on this, like around week 3 or 4 of the semester, such that you have enough time to put everything together and not have to rush too much to complete it. That being said, the assignment was also ordered to be marked harshly to reflect the standard of an investment analysis report that someone in the industry would produce. Due to this, marks were normally around the 60-75% range for groups, reflecting a tough 3rd year assignment.

Paul Docherty - Also unit coordinator and chief examiner. Delivered lectures 1, 8-12. Very engaging teaching style and easy to understand. Loved how in the last lecture, he was in a moon boot and still able to deliver the lectures at a very high standard, regardless of any pain that he was in.

Viet Cao - Ran lectures from weeks 2-7. A bit tricky to understand, and also she frequently used the document scanner to explain details of the course (particularly the different security lines and their graphical interpretations), but that was still done in a slightly confusing manner. However, I still understood most of what she delivered, even if the content was a bit dry.

- This was done on Moodle, with 1.5 hrs to complete it with one attempt only allowed. This covered knowledge from lectures 1-5. I found this to be pretty straightforward, although all of the questions were multiple choice which made it a pain to put in so much effort for just one mark to click in on your computer. However, there were a couple of tricky questions here and there, so I'd recommend putting some effort into studying before doing this test, as I didn't do any study before it but still did alright.

One practice exam provided with solutions

4 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture and live streamed

This unit uses parts from two textbooks to support itself, which made it a bit confusing to follow what needed to be read. The first book

- The tutes were pretty standard, you just went through the exercises that were all posted on Moodle at the start of the semester. They run one week behind lectures, such that wk 5 content is covered in your week 6 tute for example. One week was dedicated to group presentations, where each group presented a 5 minute pitch for the stock and its 2 competitors that they were writing an investment analysis report on. To earn your 5% tutorial participation mark, all you needed to do was try to assist your tutor once in a while to answer the questions being covered in the tutes, which is pretty straightforward as if you've prepared the questions beforehand, then you should easily be able to score 5/5 for this assessment task.

1x 2hr lecture per week
1 x 1hr tutorial per week

Semester 2, 2018

D