Money, Capital and Financial Markets Detailed Outline

This page provides a detailed outline of the online Money, Capital and Financial Markets course, a three-day programme for students aged 15-18 who already have some interest in economics, finance, or current affairs and want to explore how financial markets work in practice. The outline below shows what students study on each day, moving from the basic structure of financial markets and the trading of shares and bonds, through currency markets and portfolio strategy, and finally into market failure, banking crises, and the anatomy of financial collapse.

The course is taught fully live, with all sessions delivered in real time by expert tutors. Teaching takes place in small groups (maximum 12 students), allowing for detailed discussion, individual feedback, and active participation throughout.

The course is designed to give students a richer understanding of modern finance and of the wider economic questions that arise when we ask how markets allocate capital, how investors manage risk, how expectations shape prices, and why financial instability can have such wide-ranging effects. Rather than focusing on exam technique, it emphasises discussion, analysis, and the application of economic ideas to real-world problems. Students are introduced to a range of financial instruments, theoretical approaches, and case studies, and encouraged to think carefully about how financial systems operate – and how they sometimes go wrong.

Prefer to view and download the PDF version of the Money, Capital and Financial Markets course outline? You can do so here.

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Day One – Financial Markets, Shares and Bonds
Day Two – Currency Markets and Portfolio Strategies
Day Three – Market Failure and Financial Crises

Across the three days, students explore a wide range of financial topics and approaches, including the purpose of financial markets, stocks and shares, IPOs, bond pricing and yields, derivatives, commodities, futures and options, exchange rates, currency speculation, cryptocurrencies, portfolio management, diversification, systemic risk, leverage, bank failure, asset bubbles, asymmetric information, moral hazard, and the structure of financial crises.

By the end of the course, students will have developed a clearer sense of how financial markets operate at both national and global level, how different financial instruments relate to one another, and why debates about speculation, regulation, instability, and crisis remain central to understanding the modern economy.

Please note that for some groups, sessions may run in a different order.

10.00 – 10.20 Welcome and Introductions

An opening session to settle into the online classroom, outline how the course will run, and establish expectations for participation and discussion. Students meet each other and their tutor, take part in a short warm-up activity, and begin reflecting on what they already know – or think they know – about financial markets and investing.

10.20 – 12.30 What Are Financial Markets? Shares, IPOs and Bonds

The course begins by asking what financial markets actually are, why they exist, and what sorts of financial products are traded within them. Students explore the main purposes of financial markets – including facilitating transactions, increasing competition between buyers and sellers, spreading risk, and enabling speculation – before moving on to the stock market in particular. They consider what it means to own shares in a company, why firms issue equity, and how investors think about dividends, capital gains and voting rights. The process of the initial public offering is introduced in practical terms, giving students a sense of how a company moves from private ownership to public trading and how prices are set when shares first come to market.

The second half of the morning broadens out into different approaches to stock market investing. Students consider how investors evaluate companies, including discussion of price, earnings, expected returns and risk, and look at the distinction between faster, more speculative investing and longer-term strategies such as value investing. The session then turns to bonds, helping students understand how governments and companies borrow money, what bond yields mean, and why bond prices move inversely to yields. By the end of the morning, students have begun to see financial markets not as an isolated corner of economics, but as one of the main ways expectations, institutions and incentives interact across the wider economy.

12.30 – 1.30 Lunch

1.30 – 3.30 Reading Markets in Practice, Derivatives and Market Behaviour

In the afternoon, students begin by working with real market information and financial news, helping them become more confident in navigating the kinds of websites and price movements that appear in real-world finance. This is followed by an introduction to derivatives, including commodities, futures and options, with discussion of how these contracts derive their value from underlying assets and can be used both to hedge against risk and to speculate on future price changes. Students examine how leverage can magnify gains and losses, and how derivatives can be used either cautiously or aggressively depending on the strategy being pursued.

The final part of the day asks a broader theoretical question: how far do financial markets really reflect underlying value? Students are introduced to the efficient markets hypothesis, but also to arguments that markets are shaped by psychology, expectations, imitation and signalling. Through examples such as the dot-com bubble, they consider whether markets are primarily rational information-processing systems or whether they are also vulnerable to hype, herd behaviour and self-fulfilling trends. The day ends by encouraging students to reflect on the gap between the textbook picture of markets and the more unstable, human reality.

10.00 – 10.15 Morning Recap

The day begins with a short recap of the main ideas from Day One, helping students revisit key concepts such as stocks, bonds, speculation, hedging and yield before moving on to the global movement of money itself.

10.15 – 12.30 Exchange Rates, Currency Markets and Crypto

The morning introduces foreign exchange markets and asks one of the central questions of international finance: what determines the value of a currency? Students explore exchange rates through simple examples of trade and price comparison, and begin to see why importers generally prefer a strong currency while exporters often benefit from a weaker one. From there, the session develops into a broader discussion of floating and fixed exchange-rate regimes, including the role of supply and demand, central bank intervention, speculation and political choices in shaping currency values.

The session then turns to the special character of money itself. Students consider why currency markets can behave more erratically than ordinary goods markets, including the importance of trust, expectations and self-fulfilling prophecy in movements of exchange rates. This leads into discussion of currency overshooting, reserve currencies and the unusual position of the US dollar in the global system. The morning concludes with cryptocurrencies and related innovations, including Bitcoin ETFs, Ethereum smart contracts, central bank digital currencies and the speculative culture surrounding memecoins. Students are encouraged to think about how far crypto represents a genuine financial innovation, and how far it reproduces familiar patterns of volatility, speculation and hype in a new form.

12.30 – 1.30 Lunch

1.30 – 3.30 Portfolio Management, Diversification and Investment Strategy

In the afternoon, the focus shifts from individual markets to the problem of managing a portfolio as a whole. Students begin by considering what an investor needs to know about a client before choosing an investment strategy, including time horizon, need for liquidity, appetite for risk and the trade-off between security and return. This leads into a wider discussion of diversification and the difference between individual risk and systemic risk, helping students see why the logic of portfolio construction is not simply to chase the highest return, but to balance assets in ways that reduce vulnerability to particular shocks.

These ideas are then applied in a practical portfolio-management exercise in which students develop and defend an investment strategy for a given client. In doing so, they are pushed to think concretely about asset choice, allocation, risk profile and expected return, rather than speaking only in abstract terms. The discussion also introduces vehicles such as ETFs and index funds, helping students distinguish between active and passive strategies and think about what it means to invest in a market rather than in a single firm. By the end of the day, students have moved from learning about separate financial products to thinking more strategically about how those products fit together in real investment decisions.

10.00 – 10.15 Recap and Discussion

The final day begins with a short recap of the main ideas from the first two days, helping students draw connections between the different financial markets they have explored so far before turning to the question of what happens when those markets malfunction.

10.15 – 12.30 Inequality, Redistribution and Wealth

The morning opens by asking whether financial markets fail – and if so, how. Students begin with a discussion of market downturns and recessions, revisiting the links between inflation, interest rates, confidence and falling economic activity. This leads into a more detailed study of banking institutions, including the different roles of central banks, commercial banks, investment banks and shadow banks, and the ways these institutions appear on a balance sheet. Key concepts such as leverage, solvency and bankruptcy are introduced not as isolated definitions but as part of the practical machinery of financial instability.

These ideas are then brought together through the case study of Silicon Valley Bank. Students examine how interest-rate changes affected the value of long-term bonds, why liquidity pressures became so dangerous, and how losses on asset sales turned into a wider panic. The morning concludes by widening the lens to other forms of market failure, including bubbles, asymmetric information, moral hazard, adverse selection and market rigging. The emphasis throughout is on helping students see that financial crises are not usually the product of one single bad decision, but of a system in which incentives, opacity and interdependence can make fragility spread very quickly.

12.30 – 1.30 Lunch

1.30 – 3.10 Anatomy of a Financial Crisis

In the afternoon, students step back from individual examples and study the broader structure of financial crises. They trace the movement from credit booms and risky lending to asset-price bubbles, collapsing confidence, banking panic and fire sales. From there, the discussion moves into debt deflation and credit crunch, showing how falling asset values can make debts harder to bear and how financial distress can spill over into the wider economy through reduced lending, bankruptcies and contraction in output. Rather than treating crises as random accidents, the session gives students a model for understanding how instability develops in stages.

These ideas are then applied to the global financial crisis of 2007-08. Students use the framework they have developed to examine subprime mortgages, mortgage-backed securities, leverage and contagion, and to understand why problems in one part of the financial system became a global shock. The course ends with a broader discussion of the social role of finance – how far financial markets create value, when they become destructive, and why regulation remains such a difficult and contested question.

3.10 – 3.30 Course Wrap-Up and Reflection

The course closes with a short reflective discussion drawing together the main themes from the course. Students consider what they have learned about how money moves through an economy, the forces that sustain financial systems, and the vulnerabilities that can bring them down. The session ends on a forward-looking note, asking how the next generation of economists, policymakers and investors might build markets that are both dynamic and fair.

This outline provides a detailed view of the themes, ideas, and topics explored during the online Money, Capital and Financial Markets course. The programme is designed to introduce students to some of the central questions economists ask about financial markets, investment, exchange rates, risk, speculation, and financial crisis, combining discussion, analysis, and applied activities to show how economic reasoning can be used to understand both the behaviour of markets and the wider economic systems in which they operate.

You can also return to the main online Money, Capital and Financial Markets course page for full details about the course and how to apply.