Intermediate Python for Finance

Are you a financial or business analyst, or simply looking for an easier way to manage your stock portfolio? If so learning Python can automate financial tasks such as calculating risk, mapping market health, and visualizing a stock's price trends, saving you time and money. In this course, you’ll learn how to use Python data structures, execution control statements, and DataFrames to manipulate financial data. You will then work with pandas, using data from the Federal Reserve Bank, to explore national economic trends—an essential part of understanding investment strategies. You will also calculate risk based on stock price data, and display this data in easy to read plots. By the end of this course, you’ll be the new Python of Wall Street.

1. Datetimes and Dictionaries

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to create and manipulate Python datetime objects to help you identify key financial events, such as Black Friday. You’ll also learn how to store and efficiently look up items using Python dictionaries.

2. Control Flow and Logic

Through hands-on activities, you’ll discover how to use boolean logic to determine truth and use comparison and equality operators to control execution in if-statements and loops.

3. Pandas Dataframe

Discover how to create and access DataFrames with pandas using financial data from other data structures, including Dicts, lists, and CSV files. You’ll then uncover additional insights, as you aggregate data across rows or columns, calculate averages, and extend your data using functions.

4. Working with NASDAQ Stock Data

In this final chapter, you’ll try your hand at working with real-world NASDAQ stock data as you learn how to interpret new data, create masks to filter data, and visualize your findings with plots.