Multi-course programs with a faculty-marked capstone
Credential programs
Algorithmic trading certification, and credentials in risk, derivatives, portfolios and machine learning. A certificate is four to seven courses with an assessed capstone of your own work. The Professional Diploma joins four certificates, the Diploma in Professional Trading joins three, and the Fellowship ends in a dissertation. A credential costs less than its courses bought alone, and the two Diplomas and the Fellowship have a small number of need-based scholarships. The trader path takes a complete beginner to that Diploma without any programming. Each course earns its own certificate along the way, and the credential is awarded when every part is passed. Credentials are awards of the Institute, each with a verification code.
On the practitioner path
For engineers, traders and analysts who need working systems: labs, code reviews and assessed projects.
- Foundation Certificate in Computational FinanceThe entry quantitative finance certificate, and the opening stage of both the Professional Diploma and the Fellowship. Six courses that settle the mathematics, statistics, data and market knowledge every later course assumes, closed by a capstone.
- Certificate in Algorithmic TradingSeven courses and a capstone that take a strategy from idea to a costed, sized and validated system, traded on paper and reported the way a trading desk would read it.
- Certificate in High-Frequency Trading and Market MicrostructureFour courses and a capstone on how orders meet: the limit order book, execution algorithms and their costs, venue routing, market making and the C++ systems that run them.
- Certificate in Statistical ArbitrageSeven courses and a capstone on market-neutral trading: time series foundations, pairs and baskets, cointegration, regimes, costs and the validation that keeps spread strategies honest.
- Certificate in Systematic InvestingSeven courses and a capstone on rule-based investing over months and years: asset pricing, trend, factors, carry, allocation and the portfolio construction and risk control that hold them together.
- Certificate in Quantitative Portfolio ManagementSeven courses and a capstone on building portfolios with numbers: mean-variance and its failures, robust optimization, Black-Litterman views, factors, asset allocation, bonds, attribution and risk.
- Certificate in Quantitative Risk ManagementA financial risk management certification in six courses and a capstone on measuring and governing market and credit risk: VaR and expected shortfall, volatility models, stress tests, credit and counterparty risk, bank capital and the validation of the models themselves.
- Certificate in Machine Learning for TradingFive courses and a capstone on applying machine learning to markets without fooling yourself: labeling, features, purged validation, deep and language models, regimes and reinforcement learning.
- Professional Diploma in Algorithmic TradingThe top credential on the practitioner path. Twenty-one courses and an 80-hour capstone covering everything between the mathematics and a book you could defend to a risk committee.
On the researcher path
For quantitative researchers and graduate students: derivations, estimation and a written research capstone.
- Certificate in Derivatives PricingDerivative pricing in seven courses and a capstone, from stochastic calculus to stochastic volatility and interest rate models: how options are priced, hedged, traded and calibrated to the market.
- Fellowship in Computational FinanceThe top credential on the researcher path. Twenty-one courses and a dissertation supervised in writing and examined by two faculty members.
On the trader path
For discretionary, manual and prop traders, and for anyone starting from nothing: three certificates of trading, risk and evidence, with no programming at any point.
- Foundation Certificate in TradingThe first stage of the trader path: a trading course for beginners in five courses, from how markets and orders work to costs, charts, risk, edge, psychology and the trading journal, with a simulated-account capstone. No previous knowledge and no programming.
- Intermediate Certificate in TradingThe second stage of the trader path: a day trading course and swing trading course in one, covering technical analysis, price action, intraday execution, news, options, evidence-based testing and the written trading plan, with a tested-plan capstone. No programming.
- Advanced Certificate in TradingThe third stage of the trader path, for a certified trader at advanced level: order flow, futures, momentum and breakouts, global macro, fundamental analysis, how desk traders think, prop trading firms and overtrading, with a desk-style simulated book as the capstone. No programming.
- Diploma in Professional TradingThe top credential on the trader path and the Institute's trading certification for people who do not write code. Eleven courses and a 40-hour capstone, from a first lesson on how markets work to a six-month simulated trading business reviewed like a desk.