Great idea for a specialization and bravo to the professor for capitalizing on her affiliation with a top-tier research university while working there as a visiting professor. Unfortunately the course is riddled with errors in the very first week which is problematic for at least two reasons: 1) it may be reinforcing learning that is factually inaccurate, and 2) it adds unnecessary time and frustration to the process.

I have taken several excellent courses from Coursera that are well-designed, and while most courses can be forgiven for having a few have small errors, this is the first time I have noticed multiple errors--and a few major obvious errors--immediately in one course. After hardly an hour of working with this course I canceled the subscription and am requesting a refund for the first month's payment. I hope the creators of this course clean up the errors and inconsistencies or take the course offline.

One week in and the difficulty of the questions for the practice quiz's and tests is very significant compared to what was covered in the videos. The videos are very cut and try with basic examples and often skip over working through the problems. If I didn't have a finance background from University already, this course would be incredibly difficult.

no formulae's are explained properly

I will fail because, despite submitting my assignment on time, they were not graded by my peers on time. Please notice that I took excellent grade on all quizzes and assignments. The entire peer grading system is a fraud. Professors and Teaching assistants are supposed to grade assignments, not students. I paid a fee and I deserve my assignments to be graded properly and on time. This is a fraud!

I love the ability to replay parts of the lectures but there is zero support for this program. Also the forum features are very limited so communication and accountability are non existent. I really needed this course too but I can't spend hours and hours trying to figure it all out on my own, too time consuming. I'll have to find another investor course somewhere else.

A very basic course, for beginners, but still not enough detail included to bring a beginner to a competent level on the subject areas covered. I had to watch supplemental videos on YouTube to "flesh out" the topics covered. Examples of this included the concept of liquidity, the course video suggested that the Bid, Ask spread indicated the liquidity of an asset class. Supplemental videos showed that one could not rely simply on the Bid, Ask spread, but also the volume of assets traded to determine how liquid a stock was. Another example was the introduction of intermediate options trading strategies for the first time on a quiz. The options profit and loss diagrams and rationale for their use were not covered in the lecture videos. Some of the optional supplemental materials were not available to me or difficult to access for me as I live outside of the United States. References to YouTube videos would have been easier to access. I ended up using YouTube videos covering the same topics instead of the recommended links.

Useful course but of poor quality. Content is badly organized (students are often presented with concepts not yet introduced.) The lecturer tends to not give precise definitions of important concepts and sometimes misuses terminology (for example, use "return" to refers to "return on investment" at one place and to "internal rate of return" at another.)

Pretty basic. Needed external sources to supplement study. The course has quite short videos and could be a lot more informative.

Disappointed. There is a lot of the material for a basic introduction to global financial market and financial instruments is there. HOWEVER:

None of the formulas are derived. The formulas are often not intuitively explained or explained at all, and they are not even provided as a small handout. This forces the student to keep re-watching videos to find the relevant formula, since it's hard to remember because of the lack of intuition. It is fine not to go in depth, but at least provide summary handouts and further references.

Multiple errors. Whether it's sloppiness in the videos, the quizzes, or even better, the solutions for the quizzes.

For an introductory course it barely explains concepts, it mainly just posits them.

Good course to waste your money on, poorly designed homework, very superficial description of the topics, (especially the 2nd week materials).

Don't take the specialization. Quizzes are incorrect and won't let you progress!

The course content is a bit low on examples, making connections and explaining the 'why' - it is very to the point in therms of presenting concepts - but the professor is clear, concise and just the right difficulty.

Really good and exigent course.

The supposed time needed to complete the course is not correct. You will get to "invest" much more, but my advise is that, while hard, it deserves what it takes.

Good review of simple financial material. Not an in-depth review, but a good refresher of modules that you would have seen in your MS Finance or MBA Finance.

Great course to get an introduction to the workings of the financial market. Designed in a way that makes it possible for anyone to comprehend the matter.

Short and well elaborated course! Need for further do your own research for maximum benefit!

I would like to rate 5 stars but the math is a problem, some people has no time to learn math formulas and spend so much time calculating things, maybe some alternatives like excel would fix that issue.

Thank you, for this beaultiful course <3

The teaching staff should pay more attention to discussion forums. They appear to be abandoned.

Good for a refresher course for me

I think its a good introduction to financial markets but more from an academics perspective. We hardly had any guidance or reference to contemporary real markets. I wanted to learn about investment and I only learn how to calculate basic yields and returns. I turn on Bloomberg TV today and still do not understand any of the numbers and nomenclature they show or make reference to....

In conclusion I think the course is good from an academic standpoint but not for real life interaction with finance markets and news.

Good basics with not overwhelming details, yet giving an understanding of major mathematical mechanism connected with financial instruments. I was missing a more structured content and path and the mistakes in some excercises/practice quizes or their answers were disturbing - it should not be the case

Practice quizzes a little difficult relative to the materials and examples presented

This is an excellent course. Dr Arzu O is one of the best instructors. She designed the course in a very thoughtful manner. Her explanation style is very accurate and simple. I am an active investor in equity market, but don't have strong financial base. I have taken this course to learn more about financial markets and the course content very well satisfied my expectation. Practice Quiz and Examples helped me to understand the course content in a better way and encouraged me to read more through some online material. Taking online course in Coursera also was a very positive experience. I have got mroe than what I expected from this course. 5/5 from Me.

-Tapan Shah

An immensely informative 4 - 5-week crash course into the world of Financial Markets and Instruments. Kudos to Professor Arzu for keeping it engaging, providing real-world examples and for the overall course design. This course has some algebra thrown in (one has solve for 'x' multiple times) and gets the participant to really work on solving questions in the practice quizzes and graded assessments. If you are new to the world of Financial Markets and investing and want to dive in - this is your start!

Very good overview with basic quantitative methods and analysis. Good for beginners. Although many of the methods are calculated automatically in brokers like Schwab, they are still useful in brushing up quantitative skills. The theory and more humanities oriented side of the course is also informative. I did retail forex trading and was familiar with many terms, but I was also introduced to new processes that I was unaware of. Overall the course was very good and worth a look.