Bloomberg Market Concepts: How students can improve their financial literacy in under a month

In today’s world, financial literacy is more important than ever. As the world goes through major economic shifts, it is imperative for people to understand how their finances will be impacted by external forces such as wars, pandemics or technological advances. However, with the help of the Bloomberg Market Concepts course, people can improve their financial literacy and better prepare themselves for the unknown.

But what are the Bloomberg Market Concepts (BMC), you ask? The BMC curriculum includes various topics that introduce students to the world of finance. Through this online, self-paced course, students can develop financial fluency, learning in-depth about GDP, inflation, deflation, the stock market, and many pertinent topics. Most importantly, students are given access to the Bloomberg Terminal, a platform made by Bloomberg to investigate several areas of the financial market through screening for promising stocks and constructing portfolios to analyze performance.

The BMC course is extremely valuable to finance majors and anyone interested in learning about our economy. Finance majors can study the BMC to get a leg up on the competition by attaining a deeper understanding of the economy. For those not interested in finance, this course is still beneficial in many ways. By learning more about our economy, people can better understand the world around us and how money impacts nearly everything we do. The course awards students a certificate to authenticate their course completion, which can bolster their resume and lend itself to impressive conversations during interviews or daily interactions. Ultimately, such knowledge will equip BMC scholars with the ability to make smarter financial decisions.

The BMC course has many topics, but students only need to complete four modules to gain certification starting with a lesson on economic indicators. Through this topic, they’ll learn about GDP, inflation, and unemployment rates, which allow economists to make short and long-term predictions about the state of the economy. The second module includes information on different types of currencies that exist within our financial market and their interactions with one another. Next, students are guided through exercises on fixed income, focusing on the bond market, bonds, interest rates, and bond risks. Finally, the fourth module on equities ties together all of the concepts, further demonstrating the interconnectedness of business and finance. This module in particular features more information about the stock market, stock volatility, equities, absolute valuation, and relative valuation.

After completing this course myself, I look at the world differently. Before, I didn’t know much about the economy other than a few words like inflation, deflation, stocks, hedges, and bonds, but didn’t understand their functions. But now I view the world through the lens of an economist, carefully analyzing social and political transactions and their impact on financial markets across the globe.