This module provides a broad introduction to essential topics in modern financial economics, which crucially includes decision-making under uncertainty, portfolio selection, pricing financial assets and state contingent claims, and forecasting asset returns and volatility from historical data. In addition to offering students necessary exposure to essential knowledge in the aforementioned topics, this module also aims to develop two essential analytical abilities, namely the ability to formulate real world decision problems into mathematically solvable optimization questions and the ability to solve formulated questions either analytically or numerically. Students will gain exposure to such knowledge and develop such analytical abilities from properly selected examples and problem sets to be discussed in lectures and tutorials.