Your views on these courses (for HF)

Hello all, I am a MBA student who's also a novice in the world of HF investing. I'd appreciate if you could help rank the courses below in terms of relevance to a career in HF, and perhaps include some brief comments on the relevance of these courses to HF careers. I've taken introductory courses in corporate finance, accounting and the credit markets. Apologies for the long email. Here goes:

(1) Options Markets

This course provides a thorough and practical working knowledge of options markets. It contains four parts: (1) the basic use and properties of options; (2) the valuation models of options; (3) index and futures options; (4) risk management of options. In the first part, the course starts with various basic trading strategies and their restrictions on options prices. Students get familiar with payoffs and profits of various combinations of options contracts. It also teaches the principle of no-arbitrage valuation in basic static trading strategies. In the second part, the course builds the binomial and continuous-time models. It teaches the principle of no-arbitrage in dynamic trading strategies and introduces the principle of risk-neutral valuation. The students will have a solid understanding of the binomial tree and Black-Scholes formula for options valuation. In the third part, the course has extensive discussion on index options and futures options. It applies the no-arbitrage and risk-neutral principles to develop valuation models for index and futures options. The course will illustrate how futures and options may be used in portfolio management. In the fourth part, students learn how to measure and manage the risk of options. The so-called Greek letters are covered extensively and students learn to build dynamic trading strategies for hedging banks' short positions in options. Value at risk of portfolios containing options will be discussed in the course. Although the course focuses on business concepts and reasoning, the subject and thus the approach are highly quantitative. Only highly motivated and quantitatively oriented students should take the course. Besides B6302, the course requires the basic knowledge of calculus, statistics and Microsoft Excel.

(2) Hedge fund investment and selection
This class uses a combination of instructor lectures, class discussions and guest lectures
to teach students the methodologies of hedge fund analysis from the perspective of
investors considering investing into hedge funds. The course will have a particular focus
on the limitations and pitfalls of applying traditional security analysis to investments into
hedge funds, and the drivers of success in hedge funds. The course will focus on the
evaluation of managers involved in Directional Investing, Event Driven Strategies,
Arbitrage and Relative Value Strategies. Exposure to basis risk and hedging strategies
will also be reviewed. Course participants will be exposed to some Wall Street best
practices for performing hedge fund due diligence, with extensive guest lectures from
active investors in the field.

(3) security analysis
* This course is taught by Mauboussin. He's a pretty famous investor.

The objective of this course is to prepare students to be practitioners of security analysis. When participants finish the course, they should be confident in their ability to analyze company business models, financial statements and valuations for the purpose of investing in common stocks. The first half of the course is devoted to reviewing the essentials of financial statement and valuation analysis and forecasting, as well as the limitations and pitfalls of those same conventions. During the second half of the course, those building blocks are used to understand the drivers of value creation and market-embedded expectations. Course participants are exposed to “best practices” for performing channel checks, crafting research calls and writing reports. The curriculum has been updated to include a greater emphasis on business-model analysis and the behavioral forces and cognitive biases that affect investment decisions.

(4) Value investing

This course is designed to develop the approach to investments and security analysis pioneered by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd. The course details the comprehensive statistical evidence in favor of such an approach and the types of investments that are likely to be fruitful targets of a value approach. The course focuses on an approach to determining intrinsic values in practice that has the advantage of segregating valuation information by reliability level and using only the most reliable information as a basis for investment decisions in order to obtain a “margin of safety.” The course consists of lectures and visiting speakers who are successful practicing value investors. These have included Robert Bruce ’70, Warren Buffett, MS ’51, Mario Gabelli ’67, Michael Price, Charles Royce ’63 and Walter Schloss.

(5)Equity derivatives

This course is intended to explain how derivative products like options, futures, ETFs, structured notes, portfolio trades, credit default swaps and convertible bonds are structured, valued and used by all types of investors globally. The course is designed from both the perspective of the trader who has to account for the real-world costs of hedging derivatives and the investor who cares primarily how the derivative can improve the return or reduce the risk of his/her portfolio. It should complement other classes you have had on derivatives.

The course is broken into three sections:
o Indices, Exchange Traded Funds, Futures, Swaps and Portfolio Trading — The course starts with a discussion of “Delta 1” equity derivatives, or products that move one for one with the underlying security.
o Equity Options, Credit Derivatives and Convertibles and Structured Notes — Drawing on what you’ve already learned in other options classes, we explore options based equity and credit products, like equity options, structured notes, credit default swaps and convertible bonds. The goal of this portion of the course is to focus on what real-world factors influence trading in these products and show how they are linked to one another.
o Strategies — A large component of this course involves exploring how investors use these products. Some investors, like pension, mutual and hedge funds, are driven by economic and risk management needs solely in their use of equity derivatives. Corporations, individuals and insurance companies worry about accounting, legal and tax considerations, so any discussion of how they use derivatives requires we cover those issues.

(6) Fixed income derivatives

The fixed income derivative markets have experienced tremendous growth over the past
several years. Much of this growth has occurred in the over-the-counter (OTC) markets.
The purpose of this class is to provide an overview of these markets, with particular
emphasis on the fixed income OTC markets (perhaps better known as the swaps market).
The course will examine a variety of the derivative products which are actively traded.
Emphasis will be placed on understanding how the products are structured, how they are
priced and how they are used as either risk management tools or yield enhancement
trades.