Fixed Income and Equity Investment Strategies Training Course

Course overview

Fixed income and equity are the two ends of the capital structure, and they behave very differently. A bond has a contractual claim, a known maturity, and a price driven largely by rates and credit. An equity has a residual claim on whatever is left, no maturity, and a price driven by expectations that can change faster than any fundamental. Building a portfolio means understanding both, and understanding what happens to the combination when conditions change.

This course covers investment analysis across seven units: the market landscape, fixed income valuation, equity analysis, portfolio construction, risk management, performance measurement, and where investment strategy is heading. It is educational and is not financial or investment advice; no security, fund or strategy is recommended.

What the last few years re-taught everyone

That bonds can lose money badly. A generation of investors learned diversification as a rule of thumb, and then watched fixed income and equities fall together in a rate shock, which is precisely the correlation behavior the textbook warns about but nobody plans for. Duration, largely ignored while rates were pinned near zero, turned out to be the most important number on the page.

The lesson is not that diversification failed. It is that correlations are conditional, that a portfolio has to be understood in terms of the exposures inside it rather than the labels on it, and that risk is measured before an event, not explained afterwards.

Course objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Blend asset classes to fit stated objectives and constraints.
• Value a bond and interpret its yield, duration and convexity.
• Grade credit quality and read what a spread compensates for.
• Select shares on cash flow, earnings and honest accounting.
• Construct a portfolio around explicit exposures and correlations.
• Diversify across factors instead of doubling one exposure.
• Calibrate exposure to drawdown and concentration limits.
• Weight a return by when the cash actually arrived.
• Rotate holdings as refinancing and trading conditions change.

Course outline

Unit 1: Overview of investment markets

• What actually drives the return on a bond and on a share.
• Risk and return over long periods against a single outcome.
• Inflation and the real return left after it.
• The investment process from objectives to review.

Unit 2: Fixed income securities and valuation

• Accrued interest and the clean and dirty price of a bond.
• Reinvestment assumption inside the yield to maturity.
• Duration and convexity as a rate move gets larger.
• Credit spreads, ratings and the recovery after default.

Unit 3: Equity analysis and valuation

• Fundamental analysis of the business model and its margins.
• Discounted cash flow, dividend discount and terminal value.
• Price-to-earnings and what a high multiple already assumes.
• Choices in accounting that inflate a headline number.

Unit 4: Portfolio construction and diversification

• Bonds and equities blended into a single risk budget.
• Correlation that breaks down exactly when it is needed.
• Strategic and tactical allocation with rebalancing rules.
• Factor exposures and the same bet held twice by accident.

Unit 5: Risk management in investments

• Blind spots in volatility, drawdown and value at risk.
• Downgrade risk and the forced selling it triggers.
• Liquidity risk in a position exited only at a bad price.
• Concentration and counterparty exposure inside one fund.

Unit 6: Performance measurement and benchmarking

• Time-weighted against money-weighted on badly timed cash.
• Bond fund returns against an index of the same duration.
• Equity benchmarks where one sector is a third of the index.
• Coupon income and price change inside a reported return.

Unit 7: Future trends in investment strategies

• Maturity walls and the refinancing they force.
• Electronic bond trading and where liquidity now sits.
• Buybacks and dividends as two ways to return cash.
• Data, machine learning and the quantitative arms race.

How the course is delivered

The course uses real securities, published accounts, index data and documented market episodes as material. Participants calculate yields, durations and valuations through guided worked examples, and analyze portfolios and their behavior in discussion. There is no trading environment or software. The course is educational and is not financial or investment advice: no security, fund or strategy is recommended, and it does not certify participants. Participants who want to read company accounts more critically should take Financial Statement Analysis for Decision Making.

Who should attend

• Investment analysts, portfolio managers and wealth advisers.
• Treasury and finance professionals managing investment portfolios.
• Pension, endowment and insurance staff overseeing external managers.
• Risk, audit and compliance professionals covering investment activity.

About EuroQuest International Training

EuroQuest International Training was founded in 2015 by a team with more than 25 years of experience in professional development. We deliver over 1,000 courses and have trained more than 15,000 participants, from our head office in Bratislava, Slovakia, with hubs in Dubai, London, Barcelona, Istanbul, Vienna, Paris and Geneva. Courses are developed and reviewed by practitioners from the fields they teach.

Frequently asked questions

How much mathematics is involved?

Bond pricing, duration and portfolio statistics require arithmetic, which is worked through step by step. No advanced mathematics is assumed, and the emphasis is on interpreting the numbers correctly.

Will the course recommend specific investments?

No. It is educational and is not investment advice. Securities and strategies are used as teaching material, never as recommendations, and any investment decision remains yours with qualified advice.

Is it aimed at professionals or at individual investors?

At professionals working with portfolios or overseeing them. Individual investors sometimes attend and find it useful, but the framing is institutional.

Related courses

• Capital Markets and Investment Banking
• Hedge Funds and Alternative Investment Strategies
• Behavioral Finance and Investment Psychology
• Foreign Exchange Markets and Currency Risk Management

Register for this course

Select a city and date from the schedule above to register, or contact EuroQuest about in-house delivery for an investment team.