A two day course (Thursday to Friday) taught by practitioners with over 200 years experience (also available in distance learning format).

"The only course I shall recommend to my fund managers. This course invigorated me."

Ian Beattie-  Investment Director, New Star Institutional Managers, Inc.


"An invaluable practical insight into the human failings of capital markets and, in many ways, the perfect complement to the theoretical training prescribed for today's aspiring investors.  It also happens to be superb value for money!"

Stuart Paul- Chief Investment Officer, First State Investments


'A Practical History of Financial Markets' courageously takes on some of the more important, and more daunting, questions in finance and investments. Using a broad historical context and a diverse range of analytical approaches, the course puts standard precepts such as 'investment value' under the spotlight, with sometimes unexpected results I find myself regularly thinking back to its teachings in a practical context.

Andrew Howell, CFA- Emerging Markets Strategy, Smith Barney

"A concise and well organised course that puts today's frenetic financial
markets into context in a unique fashion.  It cannot but help to improve the
decision making process of the investment professional.  An essential course for both aspiring and aging investment managers."

Henry Thornton- CEO, BDT Investment Management Limited

A Practical History of Financial Markets is a course designed, written and taught by finance professionals for finance professionals. The ethos of the course is that one can better understand how financial markets work by understanding how they have worked. This focus provides different insights from the standard academic approach that assumes that markets are efficient and then theorises about how markets should work.

The course has five modules - Valuing Stock Markets; Investing in Periods of Inflation, Disinflation and Deflation; The Monetary Theory of Asset Prices; Behavioural Finance; and History of Institutional Investment. The course complements the skill set obtained from a formal education in financial risk management or the CFA programme. However, such formal preliminary education is not necessary for students who have at least five years experience in financial markets. The course is taught by renowned investment practitioners (Andrew Smithers, Stephen Wright, Peter Warburton, Gordon Pepper, Michael Oliver,Herman Brodie, Barry Riley and Robin Angus) with combined practical experience of over two hundred years.

A Practical History of Financial Markets has been approved as part of the CFA Institute Professional Development Program and forms one unit of the Edinburgh Business School MBA Program. The course is taught three times a year in various worldwide locations (previous locations include Edinburgh, London, New York, Singapore) and is owned and run by an educational charity, the Stewart Ivory Foundation, through its subsidiary the SIF Education Company.

To register for the course or obtain any further information please email the course director Russell Napier at russell@sifeco.org .