Finance

Finance is the application of the principles of financial economics to an inter-related set of monetary problems. Its aim is in the optimal use of financial instruments. In the case of a company, this generally involves balancing risk and profitability and is typically called managerial finance or corporate finance. Investment management is concerned with the identification of an optimal portfolio of assets, given a set of objectives and constraints, as well as with the valuation of assets. Finance can also be used by individuals (called personal finance), and by governments (called public finance). Finance can be used by a wide variety of organizations including schools and non-profit organizations. In general, the goals of each of the above disciplines are achieved through the use of appropriate financial instruments, with consideration to their institutional setting.

Finance involves:

• Financial institutions and regulation

• Financial markets and instruments
  • Commodities - topics
  • Stocks - topics
  • Bonds - topics
  • Money market instruments- topics
  • Derivative securities- topics

• Valuation
  • Determination of the fair value of an asset
    • How risky is the asset? (identification of the asset appropriate discount rate)
    • What cash flows will it produce? (discounting of relevant cash flows)
    • How does the market price compare to similar assets? (relative valuation)
    • Are the cash flows dependent on some other asset or event? (derivatives, contingent claim valuation)

• Corporate and Managerial finance
  • Capital investment decisions - generally relating to a corporation's long term (fixed) assets and capital structure
  • Working capital management - relating to current assets and short term financing

• Investment management
  • Identify relevant objectives and constraints: institution or individual - goals - time horizon - risk aversion - tax considerations
  • Identify the appropriate portfolio: what to invest in - how much to invest - when to invest
  • Identify the appropriate strategy: active vs passive - hedging strategy
  • Measure the portfolio performance

• Wealth management and personal finance
  • How much money will be needed by an individual (or a family) at various points in the future?
  • How is that need to be funded?

• Public finance
  • Identification of required expenditure of a public sector entity
  • Source(s) of that entity's revenue
  • The budgeting process

Finding Finance Articles

There are over 250 finance articles in Wikipedia. See list of finance topics or List of finance topics (alphabetical).

Finding related topics

• list of accounting topics
• list of management topics
• list of human resource management topics
• list of marketing topics
• list of economics topics
• list of international trade topics
• list of information technology management topics
• list of production topics
• list of business law topics
• list of business ethics, political economy, and philosophy of business topics
• list of business theorists
• list of economists
• list of corporate leaders
• list of companies

External links

• For an in-depth finance glossary, see Glyn A. Holton's riskglossary

• For a Hypertextual Finance Glossary, see Prof. Campbell R. Harvey

• For material covering three areas in finance - corporate finance, valuation and investment management, see Prof. Aswath Damodaran

• For an an interactive corporate finance environment, see Prof. Rock Mathis

• For articles on current corporate finance and investment issues, visit Oaktree Research , a financial education portal

• For illustrative (simpler) worked examples covering several of these topics see teachmefinance

• For introductory articles covering mathematical finance see quantnotes