Professor Larry Harris teaches an innovative course entitled "Trading and Exchanges." The course introduces USC business students to the theory and practice of securities trading at exchanges and in dealer networks. The course examines
·
why and how people trade,
·
the principals of proprietary trading,
·
why market institutions are organized as they are,
·
how they are changing in response to information technology
innovations,
·
the origins of liquidity, volatility, price efficiency, and
trading profits, and
·
the role of public policy in the markets.
At the end of the course, students know how to
·
solve various trading problems,
·
recognize various trading styles,
·
judge whether you will be a successful trader,
·
evaluate and motivate brokers,
·
design markets, and
·
effectively lobby policy-makers on market issues.
This
course is for anyone who wants to understand how markets work and what traders
do in them. The reading
assignments and the class lectures are appropriate for students who have no
market experience. The course has
no prerequisites.
Students
who trade in the financial markets find this course to be especially
valuable. Although they already know
much about market institutions, the economic perspectives that they learn in
this course greatly improve their understanding of why some people make money
while others lose money. Many
brokers and dealers have taken this class and have found it quite
valuable.
USC offers separate versions of the course for undergraduate business students (FBE 440) and for MBA students (FBE 554). The course is very popular with both groups. A total of 200 students typically enroll in three sections of the course.
Professor Harris designed the course for USC and first taught it in Spring of 1991. He recently finished a textbook, TRADING AND EXCHANGES: Market Microstructure for Practitioners, for the course.
Return to Professor Larry Harris's home page
Last revised 1/2/2002.