MSC Investment & Finance

The world of finance is such a crucial and significant factor in our everyday lives. From the banks to giant corporations, finance plays a vital part in the stability and growth of the economy. Finance also intertwines heavily with economics, credit and liquidity provision helps fuel many aspects of economic activity. Credit allows businesses and other entities to invest beyond their cash reserves and governments to even out their spending by mitigating the cyclical pattern of tax revenues and to invest in infrastructure projects. Banks are the main direct providers for credit and liquidity, further facilitating economic activity. I took an interest in finance early, ever since my father explained the importance of managing money. This interest then bloomed during my undergraduate study of economics. Learning about financial management, how firms calculate risk, and how the Bank of England can use monetary policy to control liquidity to help stabilise financial markets. All of these gave me a glimpse of the financial side of economics and truly fascinated me, ultimately leading me to decide to pursue a masters to further my interest in economics and finance.

During my undergraduate study, I extensively covered macroeconomic and microeconomics at an advanced level. I believe that this puts me in a strong position in meeting the prerequisite economic understanding required for the program. In macroeconomics, over the three years, I thoroughly looked at how economic data supports and facilitates macroeconomic policy-making; and how different decisions about measurement and interpretation of data can lead to different conclusions about the function of economies or the optimal path of economic policy. I have learned a wide variety of macroeconomic models, that I can use and interpret, to illustrate the influence of government intervention on future investments and the financial market. Throughout my time partaking in microeconomics, I analysed different firms behaviour and their decision making, based on financial implications in the context of different markets. looking at decision-making and markets when all agents have both perfect and imperfect information, we see different strategic interaction among firms in both scenarios. One of the key analytical skills I obtained is game theory. I can model these strategic interactions to represent a game, that can be used to solve how each agent would act to maximise its chances of success mathematically and logically. Game theory is an extremely useful tool that can be used to solve for a rather complicated array of outcomes in a real-world situation and can also be used as a tool for financial analysis and decision making.

On top of the Key pure economic modules, the mathematical economics and econometrics modules over the three years of my undergraduate study, have sufficiently prepared me for the base quantitative knowledge that is required to successfully partake and complete the course. I learnt a vast amount of key analytical and deductive techniques. These skills apply to the modern application of econometric techniques as well as financial data. Econometrics has provided me with an in-depth look at the different range of models that often arise in finance. Using a variety of different data sets such as; limited dependent variables, univariate and multivariate time series, and panel data. Using Stata, a powerful statistical software, I can manipulate these different types of data sets and carry out statistical analysis. I can perform advanced econometric procedures including panel and time series regression models. Once the regression model is formed, Stata allows me to carry out many types of statistical test to assess the models fit to the data. Through Stata, I can analyse more heavy and rich models and conduct economic research that can further assist me in data analysis for my dissertation. In contrast to econometrics, mathematics for economics is another module that focuses on the methods for studying dynamic economic problems. Mathematical techniques are used to explain how specific economic problems are solved. Using optimization techniques such as the Kuhn-tucker condition, I can obtain qualitative results which can be used to solve a firm’s optimization problem.

With the world facing a global pandemic in Covid-19, it is fascinating to see how economies and financial markets worldwide will be impacted and react to the deterring effects of the virus. Currently, we have seen Covid-19 impact all financial markets worldwide and share prices have seemed to drop significantly and continuously. Studying finance at a postgraduate level will help me attain the skills to be able to understand and predict how financial markets and economies will react to shocks that occur from catastrophic events, such as global pandemics or even a financial crisis. Studying economics and finance at a postgraduate level from a prestigious institution such as Kings College London will not only grow and expand my understanding in the financial field, but it will cement my prospects of obtaining a career within the financial world. Particularly in the banking industry where all the skills I have gained from the program will be extremely desirable.