Financial Markets Explained
Stocks, bonds, banks, insurance and how markets really work.
Taught by Dipesh Koirala · CFA, Financial Analyst
What you'll learn
- Explain what a financial market does and name the main participants and instruments
- Describe how a stock price is formed on an exchange and what an index measures
- Price a simple bond and explain why bond prices fall when interest rates rise
- Trace how commercial banks create credit and how a central bank steers rates
- Compute the return and risk of a two-asset portfolio and explain diversification
- Summarise the causes of two historical financial crises and the reforms that followed
About this course
This free financial markets course is a plain-English tour of how the financial system fits together, written for young professionals, students and anyone who reads the business news and wants it to make sense. You will learn what stocks, bonds, banks, central banks and insurers actually do, how prices are formed on an exchange, why interest rates move everything else, and how risk, return and diversification work in practice. Along the way you will price a bond and compute a portfolio return in Python, then trace a trade from order to settlement. The course closes with regulation and a clear-eyed look at bubbles and crises, from 1929 to 2008 and the 2023 bank failures. No prior finance knowledge is required; basic arithmetic and curiosity are enough. By the end you will have the vocabulary and mental models to follow the financial news, understand a rate decision and see where you fit in the system.
Course content
7 lessons- 1What a Financial Market DoesWhy markets exist, who takes part, and the four jobs the financial system performs for the real economy.Preview
- 2Stocks: Ownership, Exchanges and IndicesWhat a share really is, how an exchange matches buyers and sellers, and what an index like the S&P 500 measures.
- 3Bonds and Interest RatesHow bonds work, why yields and prices move in opposite directions, and what the yield curve tells you.
- 4Banks, Central Banks and the Money SystemHow commercial banks create credit, what a central bank actually controls, and why bank runs still happen.
- 5Insurance, Pensions and Pooling RiskHow insurers and pension funds turn many small uncertain losses into one predictable cost, and where that breaks.
- 6Risk, Return and DiversificationMeasure risk as volatility, see why diversification is the only free lunch, and compute a two-asset portfolio in Python.
- 7Regulation, Bubbles and CrisesWho regulates what, how clearing protects you, why markets overshoot, and what changed after 1929, 2008 and 2023.