Stock Markets and Corporate Finance: A Primer examines the nature of the stock market and its implications for corporate management. In the historical context of financial institutions and business finance, students are stimulated to learn that traditional totems of corporate finance can no longer be presented as dogma, but rather as exceedingly frail models of reality. At the core of this text is the philosophy that financial institutions and corporate/business finance are more satisfactorily understood in relation to one another.This revised text from the 2017 Stock Markets and Corporate Finance has allowed for a reshaping of the material with the deletion of a number of chapters considered 'interesting' but overly academic. This additional space has allowed for an update on the chapter 'Financial Institutions and a History of Stock Markets' as well as accounting for the circumstances of a post-COVID-19 era. The chapter 'Financial Planning and Working Capital' has been reworked to demonstrate how a firm's financial management team might interrogate its financial accounts to assess the viability of the firm and the management of its working capital.From reading this book, the reader will achieve insight into the behaviour and importance of financial institutions and firms as they are presented in the media, and how they impact on their own lives. Exercises and solutions are designed to re-enforce chapter material, while animated PowerPoint presentations are available as supplementary material to the book.

Stock Markets, Investments and Corporate Behavior examines the nature of stock market growth and decline, the function of financial markets, and their implications for commercial companies. Traditionally, finance academics have attempted to understand financial markets and commercial companies as physicists approach their subject matter: with a set of laws in mind that govern the field. But finance is not physics. The academic's approach falsely assumes that financial markets can be understood as systems within which self-interested maximizers behave in logical ways that are coordinated by the invisible hand of the price mechanism. This book demonstrates that finance is more appropriately understood as a field in which investors and finance managers may or may not use rational calculations as the basis of their decision making.This book opens with an effective dismantling of the traditional mathematical approach used to understand and describe markets and corporate financial behavior. In its place, the mathematics of growth and decline is developed anew, while holding to the realization that the decisions of organizations rely on the choices of real people with limited information available to them. The book will appeal to all students who wish to reappraise their knowledge of finance in a thoughtful manner. Specifically, this book is designed to appeal to anyone who wishes to refine their understanding of the nature of stock markets and financial growth, optimal portfolio allocation, option pricing, asset valuation, corporate financial behavior, and what it means to be ethical in our financial institutions.

This book examines the nature of the stock market and its implications for corporate management. It provides an introduction to core issues in finance and differs from traditional textbooks in its recognition that 'finance is not physics' - in the sense that how markets behave today is not necessarily how they will behave tomorrow. Nevertheless, a certain level of 'physics' can be recognized as underpinning the development of stock market valuations and corporate financial decision-making.In short, the objective of the text is to instill insight in regards to the functioning of markets and corporate behavior, as opposed to algebraic derivations from unrealistic assumptions. Rather than subscribe unthinkingly to an 'efficient market hypothesis', at each stage of the development of the text's conceptual framework, we also recognize the reality of market 'sentiment' and the fundamental uncertainty that managers face in their decisions.Based around a teaching programme with worked questions and solutions, Stock Markets and Corporate Finance is the perfect accompaniment for MBA, undergraduate and graduate students looking for a critical textbook on the nature of the financial sector and corporate finance.

This book examines the nature of the stock market and its implications for corporate management. It provides an introduction to core issues in finance and differs from traditional textbooks in its recognition that 'finance is not physics' - in the sense that how markets behave today is not necessarily how they will behave tomorrow. Nevertheless, a certain level of 'physics' can be recognized as underpinning the development of stock market valuations and corporate financial decision-making.In short, the objective of the text is to instill insight in regards to the functioning of markets and corporate behavior, as opposed to algebraic derivations from unrealistic assumptions. Rather than subscribe unthinkingly to an 'efficient market hypothesis', at each stage of the development of the text's conceptual framework, we also recognize the reality of market 'sentiment' and the fundamental uncertainty that managers face in their decisions.Based around a teaching programme with worked questions and solutions, Stock Markets and Corporate Finance is the perfect accompaniment for MBA, undergraduate and graduate students looking for a critical textbook on the nature of the financial sector and corporate finance.

Stock Markets and Corporate Finance: A Primer examines the nature of the stock market and its implications for corporate management. In the historical context of financial institutions and business finance, students are stimulated to learn that traditional totems of corporate finance can no longer be presented as dogma, but rather as exceedingly frail models of reality. At the core of this text is the philosophy that financial institutions and corporate/business finance are more satisfactorily understood in relation to one another.This revised text from the 2017 Stock Markets and Corporate Finance has allowed for a reshaping of the material with the deletion of a number of chapters considered 'interesting' but overly academic. This additional space has allowed for an update on the chapter 'Financial Institutions and a History of Stock Markets' as well as accounting for the circumstances of a post-COVID-19 era. The chapter 'Financial Planning and Working Capital' has been reworked to demonstrate how a firm's financial management team might interrogate its financial accounts to assess the viability of the firm and the management of its working capital.From reading this book, the reader will achieve insight into the behaviour and importance of financial institutions and firms as they are presented in the media, and how they impact on their own lives. Exercises and solutions are designed to re-enforce chapter material, while animated PowerPoint presentations are available as supplementary material to the book.