Registration for the Q2-2024 FDP Exam Opens December 11, 2023 |
Our webinars will boost your expertise in the latest trends in the industry and share insight into the FDP charter. Have a recommendation for an industry related topic, an author we should invite, an article you want to learn more about? Contact us: info@fdpinstitute.org. |
Machine Learning-Based Systematic Investing in Agency Mortgage-Backed Securities Date: September 19, 2023 With a total outstanding balance of more than $8 trillion, agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) represent the second largest segment of the US bond market and the second most liquid fixed-income market after US Treasuries. Institutional investors have long participated in this market to take advantage of its attractive spread over US Treasuries, low credit risk, low transaction cost, and the ability to transact large quantities with ease. MBS are made of individual mortgages extended to US homeowners. The ability for a homeowner to refinance at any point introduces complexity in prepayment analysis and investing in the MBS sector. Traditional prepayment modeling has been able to capture many of the relationships between prepayments and related factors such as the level of interest rates and the value of the embedded prepayment option, yet the manual nature of variable construction and sheer amount of available data make it difficult to capture the dynamics of extremely complex systems. The long history and large amount of data available in MBS make it a prime candidate to leverage machine learning (ML) algorithms to better explain complex relationships between various macro- and microeconomic factors and MBS prepayments. | FDP Candidate Orientation Session Date: September 13, 2023 This webinar features members of the FDP Curriculum, Operations and Candidate Relations Teams. The following topics are discussed: Curriculum materials, Learning Objectives and Practice Question review. We will go over the exam structure and format, and available resources. Preparation for exam day and items permitted during the exam will be covered. | Leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) in Finance Date: August 17, 2023 Large language models such as Bard and ChatGPT are rooted in natural language processing models developed decades earlier. How did we get here? This presentation will take us through this fascinating journey. The turning point in this process was the invention of the Transformer Attention Mechanism, which revolutionized the implementation of attention by dispensing with previous neural network architectures, relying solely on a self-attention mechanism. The amazing power unleashed by this new mechanism has businesses scrambling to exploit it, and this is where prompt engineering plays a critical role. So important that there is a new position has been created: Prompt Engineer. This webinar also discusses the essential aspects of prompt engineering for financial applications and analysis.Dr. Hossein Kazemi will moderate this presentation with Avi Patel and Raul Salles de Padua who will take us on a brief journey through the evolution in NLU and NLP, from word embeddings to the current state of LLMs. We will share how to leverage adoption of LLMs, Generative AI capabilities and better understand the LLM-Ops lifecycle. Finally, we will demonstrate the art of the possible with LLMs in action. |
Revolutionizing the Financial Industry Through Python and Open Source Date: August 15, 2023 Didier Rodrigues Lopes, Founder & CEO of OpenBB will discuss his journey from the pain points of doing investment research and how this led him to start building his own investment research platform in Python and raising $8.8M to democratize investment research through open source. He will introduce the OpenBB Terminal - the open source investment research platform, and some of its capabilities. In addition, he will present the OpenBB SDK which allows programmatic access to the data from the OpenBB Terminal, allowing quants, analysts and developers to build custom tools and dashboards.Dr. Hossein Kazemi, Senior Advisor for CAIA Association and FDP Institute will moderate the session and Cordell Tanny, Founder & CEO of Trend Prophets will show how he uses OpenBB to replicate some advanced Bloomberg charting techniques required for macroeconomic analysis. | Unleashing the Power of Neural Networks: A Personal Journey into Creating and Harnessing a Neural Network for Trading Stocks Date: July 20, 2023 In a world where artificial intelligence is becoming complex and gaining influence, creating and using a machine learning model is not only a technical endeavor but also a personal journey of exploration, challenges, and growth. Tom Pickel, Founder of Souppe will share his journey of building a neural network from the ground up. | Large Language Models in Finance: Advances and Impact Date: July 18, 2023 Alik Sokolov, CEO of Responsibli and Dr. Kathryn Wilkens, Founder of Pearl Quest will discuss the revolution of natural language processing in recent years, and how it applies to various areas of investment management. Our ability to work with unstructured text data, which is abundant in investment management, has undergone several evolutions from the late 2010's: from sequence-to-sequence models for machine translation, to the advent of transformers and transfer learning, to the recent breakthroughs achieved by Large Language Models popularized by Chat GPT. These changes will have a profound impact on investment management, and we will examine several case studies and applications. We will also examine the long-term future of various investment and wealth management roles, and especially the long-term impact on ESG and responsible investing. |
Review of Prometric Test Center and ProProctor Remote Testing Date: June 22, 2023 Map out your learning journey to obtain the FDP Charter. The FDP team will answer questions about the FDP program, where to obtain your curriculum, prep providers, preparation for exam day and focused attention on our testing options. This is a great opportunity to clearly see the steps required to have a successful exam experience. | Can Large Language Models (ex. ChatGPT) Produce More Accurate Analyst Forecasts? Date: June 21, 2023 Russ Goyenko, Associate Professor of Finance at McGill University discusses with Dr. Hossein Kazemi how large language models can, and soon they will produce more accurate analyst forecasts. Using textual information from a complete history of regular quarterly and annual (10-Q and 10-K) filings by U.S. corporations, we train machine learning algorithms and large language models, LLMs, to predict future earnings surprises. First, the length of MD&A section on its own is negatively associated with future earnings surprises and firm returns in the cross-section. Second, neither sentiment-based nor classic NLPs approaches are able to ``learn'' from the past managerial discussions to forecast future earnings. Third, only "finance-trained" LLMs have the capacity to "understand'' the contexts of previous discussions to predict both positive and negative earnings surprises, and future firm returns. Due to proprietary nature of the presentation the slide deck is not provided. | The Best of Both Worlds: Forecasting US Equity Market Returns Using a Hybrid Machine Learning-Time Series Approach Date: June 20, 2023 Predicting long-term equity market returns is of great importance for investors to strategically allocate their assets. Harshdeep Ahluwalia, Head of Asset Allocation, Americas for Vanguard Investment Strategy Group is one of the authors invited to discuss the exploration of machine learning methods to forecast US stock returns 10-years ahead and compare the results to the traditional Shiller regression-based forecasts more commonly used in the asset-management industry. |
FDP Charter Information Session Date: June 6, 2023 Learn more about the FDP Community along with the Charter curriculum and a roadmap to prepare for the upcoming FDP exam. This session will provide an outline of the curriculum, background requirements, reading materials and study tools to help you prepare. The Financial Data Professional Institute (FDPI) has designed a self-study program to provide financial professionals with an efficient path to learn the essential aspects of financial data science. The Financial Data Professional (FDP) is a global designation for investment professionals with data science skills. | Forking Paths in Empirical Studies Date: May 23, 2023 Guillaume Coqueret, Associate Professor, Emlyon Business School and Dr. Hossein Kazemi, Senior Advisor, FDP Institute discuss the importance of small variations in the implementation protocol of applied studies. This presentation will share why we advocate the usefulness of reporting a wide range of outcomes in empirical work, based on many variations of design choices. This allows us to characterize the effects more exhaustively and leads to more robust conclusions. We illustrate these ideas in two studies: one on equity premium prediction and one on portfolio sorts (asset pricing anomalies, i.e., factors). | How to Build Better Portfolios in Python Using Riskfolio-Lib Date: April 18, 2023 Are you looking to optimize your investment portfolio to maximize returns and minimize risks? Do you want to learn how to use Python to build powerful investment strategies and manage your portfolio efficiently? Then, this webinar is for you! |
Deep Neural Net Applications on Trading and Risks Date: April 13, 2023 Many cutting-edge and AI/ML technologies have matured from R&D into robust tools in the past few years. Successful applications tend to be correctly scoped to provide immediate impact (3-6 months) to resolve existing bottlenecks, and by re-imagining a fresh approach on ‘how things are done’, through re-working of critical but implicit/unquestioned assumptions. | How Should Long-Term Investors Form Portfolios? Date: March 28, 2023 Nowadays, the availability of alternative data and their adoption in the asset management industry to improve investment decision processes is a widespread alternative approach. It comes with the help of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence techniques that allow the processing of these data, reducing their noise, and converging Big Data into Smart Data. We are proud to have Claude Perron, Founder of FIAM as an Association Partner sponsoring today's event. FIAM's mission is to contribute to the development and competitiveness of the Quebec financial community and beyond. | Developing an Improved Investment Style Analysis Algorithm and My Journey to the FDP Designation by Cordell Tanny Date: March 9, 2023 In this fireside chat and live demonstration, Cordell Tanny will share with Dr. Hossein Kazemi his journey through his financial services career and how it led him to the FDP designation. He will describe his experiences with the program and how the material learned in the curriculum helped him not just advance his knowledge of how machine learning and AI can be used in finance, but also how to apply many of the concepts to his daily workflow. By the end of the presentation, the audience will have a better understanding of the importance of the FDP designation and gain insights into the journey of obtaining the FDP Charter. The audience will also see how open-sourced python libraries and financial data from free sources can be used to build innovative quantitative models. |
FDP Q2-2023 Candidate Orientation Session Date: March 2, 2023 This webinar features members of the FDP Curriculum, Operations and Candidate Relations teams. We will discuss curriculum materials, Learning Objectives and provide a Practice Question review. We will go over the exam structure and format, and available resources. In addition, preparation for exam day and items permitted during the exam will be covered. | From TradFi to DeFi Through the Lens of Experience Date: February 23, 2023 The CAIA Boston Chapter is pleased to present a panel discussion of global leaders who have led significant financial service organizations through periods of change and innovation over the last couple of decades. Learn how they have taken, adapted, and augmented those skills in this new era of digital disruption and innovation 2.0, under the broad heading of DeFi. How do they assess the new opportunities within a sea of disruption, and learn why the underpinnings of risk management, process, and procedure remain so critically important for a sustainable business model. | How is ESG Reshaping the Alternative Investment Business? Date: February 15, 2023 Today, ESG is no longer just an acronym but a reality, expected to reach a third of assets under management by 2025. It is spreading across all asset classes, including the less liquid ones. ESG now defines the new frontier of alternative investments. Our speakers will be discussing the recent trends in alternative investments, how ESG impacts the alternative investment business and the important role of data. Laura Merlini, Managing Director, EMEA will moderate a discussion with Mehrzad Mahdavi, Executive Director of FDP Institute along with Florence Angles, Managing Principal, Capco and Julia Bonafede, Co-Founder, Rosetta Analytics. |
FDP Q2-2023 Review of Prometric Test Center and Remote Proctor Testing Session Date: January 25, 2023 The FDP team answers questions about the FDP program, where to obtain your curriculum materials, study tools, preparation for exam day, the demo exam and focus attention on our testing options. Map out your learning journey to obtain the FDP Charter. FDP Senior Advisor, Hossein Kazemi shares the value add of the FDP Charter, the curriculum, and how you can leverage your FDP learnings as you advance your career. | Q2-2023 Charter Information Session Recording Date: January 11, 2023 Learn more about the curriculum and the roadmap to prepare for the upcoming FDP exam. This session will provide an outline of the curriculum, background requirements, reading material and study tools to help you prepare. The Financial Data Professional Institute (FDPI) has designed a self-study program to provide financial professionals with an efficient path to learn the essential aspects of financial data science. The Financial Data Professional (FDP) is a global designation for investment professionals with data science skills. Slide Deck | Beyond the Black Box: Machine Learning for Equities Date: December 14,2022 Developing reliable and intuitive interpretation is essential for the application of machine learning to investing. This presentation discusses a framework for decomposing any machine learning model into linear, nonlinear, and interaction effects that drive both prediction and performance. With a case study of predicting US large cap stock returns, this presentation will show how the "Model Fingerprint" tool enables practitioners to summarize key characteristics, similarities and differences among different models, thereby enhancing their understanding of the market. Dr. Kathryn Wilkens, Founder of Pearl Quest LLC and current member of the FDP Institute curriculum team will explore this further with Andrew Li, Vice President, Quantitative Researcher, State Street Associates. Portfolio Management Research has provided a Practical Applications Report for the "Investible and Interpretable Machine Learning for Equities" article found in the Journal of Financial Data Science for all webinar registrants. This article is included in the FDP Institute curriculum for the Q2-2023 exam. |