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Curriculum / Phase 1 · Common Quantitative Core

Financial Instruments, Markets and Conventions

Study financial instruments, pricing conventions, funding and liquidity through a structured quant finance course.

Why study Financial Instruments, Markets and Conventions?

Pricing, risk and backtesting all depend on the details of the instrument being modelled. This programme connects contracts and market conventions to the economic exposures that a quant must represent.

Who this is for

For learners ready to move from basic financial vocabulary to modelling actual instruments and trading arrangements.

What you should be able to do

  • Compare cash instruments and derivative payoffs.
  • Apply discounting and no-arbitrage reasoning.
  • Account for funding, collateral and instrument-data conventions.

An example of the work this prepares you for

An instrument comparison sheet that reconciles cash flows, quote conventions, funding and the main sources of risk.

Prerequisites and suggested preparation

You should be comfortable with the background covered in these programmes. Equivalent knowledge from university study or independent learning is also suitable.

A preview of the learning journey

The lessons build towards these kinds of reasoning and practical work.

Translate contracts into exposures

Identify the variables that drive a position’s value.

Check economic consistency

Recognise when cash-flow or quote assumptions contradict one another.

Account for market frictions

Explain why funding, collateral and liquidity affect an implementation.

Members work through the detailed lessons, derivations, worked examples and solutions inside the learning dashboard.

Explore lesson previews by topic

Open a topic preview to see its introduction, learning objectives and prerequisites. Previous and next links let you explore the lessons in study order. Full lessons are available in the member dashboard; selected samples are free to read in full.

Topic previewMarkets and traded instruments5 lessonsTopic previewDerivatives, funding and liquidity4 lessonsTopic previewApplied instruments project1 lessonTopic previewMarkets, Participants, and the No-Arbitrage Principle4 lessonsTopic previewFixed Income: Bonds, Yields, and Interest Rate Risk5 lessonsTopic previewCredit: Corporate Bonds, Credit Spreads, and the Default Option2 lessonsTopic previewEquities, Money Markets, and FX3 lessonsTopic previewForwards, Futures, Swaps, and Contracts for Difference8 lessonsTopic previewCommodities and the Cost-of-Carry World4 lessonsTopic previewA First Look at Options: Payoffs, Bounds, and the Binomial Model6 lessons

Free resources to start learning

Use these alongside the programme or to prepare independently. Start with the introductory material, work through an example, then return to the research papers when the underlying ideas are familiar.

  1. Video lectures · Free

    Finance Theory I: lecture videos

    MIT OpenCourseWare · Andrew Lo

    Build market intuition through the fixed-income, portfolio and derivatives lectures.

  2. University course · Free

    Foundations of Financial Engineering

    Columbia · Martin Haugh

    Read the notes on forwards, swaps, futures and options alongside contract examples.

  3. Documentation · Free

    QuantLib

    QuantLib contributors

    Inspect how an open-source pricing library represents instruments, dates and conventions.

Optional textbook reference

These books are paid references. Check your university or public library for access.

  1. Textbook · Paid / library

    Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives

    John C. Hull · Pearson

    Optional textbook for detailed instrument conventions and derivatives examples.

Links reviewed 14 October 2026. Free refers to the linked reading, notes or videos; printed books and certificates may cost extra.

Find more papers and learning materials in the SelfMadeQuant Directory.

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