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I was really hyped for this course and kept thinking about taking it for about a year. I read a review about 6 months ago that recommends the Finance and capital markets course on Khan Academy and I did watch a good chunk of the videos there and made notes as well, before I decided to finally purchase the course on Coursera. Overall it's a really good course. Robert Shiller is just such a charismatic and passionate professor and I love listening to him, the assignments were very fair and the content very interesting. I really love how Shiller doesn't just teach you the financial theory, but also its societal implications. Finance is not just about money, but about getting things done. This is such a refreshing and unique perspective - and I love it! However it's also not a perfect course. I agree with another review that this course is very US-centric. This should come as no surprise, because this is a Yale course. Finance is very tightly regulated by all governments on Earth (each country will thus have different specifics) and I think that learning about the financial markets in the US makes the most sense, because the US is the most advanced in this field. However you do lose a bit of your motivation, when the assignment questions ask some specific things about financial history or companies from the US. My only other complaint would be that some terms are not defined or explained well in the course. While I was taking notes from the course, I often had to check the definitions on Investopedia (for example the definition of a Beta). These definitions become very important later on in the assignments. I think that Khan Academy does this better - because Khan assumes that you don't know anything and he explains things very intuitively. So just like another reviewer I can really recommend the Finance and capital markets course on Khan Academy (it's free ^^) in tandem with Financial Markets by Robert Shiller. In conclusion, if you're looking for a (beginner) finance course on Coursera, then this is the best course you can take, but as most things it isn't perfect.

This course is absolutely not for beginners, I would know, I'm a beginner. I have no background in economics or finance, and my math was rusty at best (had to brush up on my probabilities). I'm currently on week 3, and I will say it takes me usually 1 to 2 hours to get through some of the 11- and 8-minute videos. The first week alone I spent 6 hours a day for 5 days just getting through the information. Let me explain, if you want to actually understand how the topics in future videos relate to the ones you're watching now, Investopedia, Google, and random undergraduate papers on the internet will become your best friends. Finance at first seems like a jumble of models that vaguely overlap, but you have to actually dive into the concepts and understand the maths and economics behind them to see how they relate to one another. CAPM was barely mentioned in week 1 and 2, but had I not taken 3 days to give myself a crash course on CAPM, nothing in week 1 and 2 would have made any sense at all and moving forward I wouldn't have understood how future formulas related to past concepts. This week I've spent 5 hours teaching myself how bonds relate to the discount rate we see in the DDM/GGM/ and PDV models, how yield and interest/ central bank policy are related, and what coupon rates are. This was to understand an 11-minute video, one of 8, in the first half of week 3. Be prepared. Gird your loins. If you want to get the most out of this course, use it predominantly as a template to direct you to new topics that you can research on your own, if you do this I promise you will learn more in 8 weeks than you could possibly imagine.

I recently completed the Yale's Financial Markets course and would like to share my thoughts. The course left a strong impression on me with its content and approach. Under the guidance of Professor Robert Shiller, a Nobel Prize laureate, we explored a wide range of topics related to the functioning of financial markets, from their historical foundations to modern financial instruments. I learned a lot of new and interesting things that significantly expanded my perspective. However, at times, the course content felt somewhat excessive, and I found myself wishing for more specificity and practical skills. Professor Shiller aims to cover as many aspects as possible, which is undoubtedly valuable, but I think the course could have focused more on topics like securities, derivatives, indices, and their role in financial markets. This course provided a solid theoretical foundation, but I realize that to start a career in this field, I need to continue my education and deepen my knowledge through additional specialized courses. Nevertheless, I am glad I took this course, as it was an important step toward my professional goals. If you're looking to gain a general understanding of financial markets and familiarize yourself with the ideas of one of the most renowned economists in the world, this course is an excellent choice.