Financial Computing BSc (Hons): XJTLU 2+2 programme

The last few decades has seen a huge transformation in finance, where
human traders have been increasingly replaced by algorithms. The aims of COMP226 are to:

– Provide an understanding of financial markets at the level of individual trades;
– Provide an overview of computer-based trading applications;
– Introduce key issues with the use of market data;
– Develop a practical understanding of the development of algorithmic trading strategies.

The module aims to introduce students to the modern theory of finance and financial management. Theoretical concepts like the net present value, decision making under uncertainty, dividend valuation, bond pricing, portfolio theory, asset pricing, futures and options are introduced. In all cases numerical examples, using real market data, will be used to make theory come to life.

This module introduces students to the problems arising from databases, including concurrency in databases, information security considerations and how they are solved; the integration of heterogeneous sources of information and the use of semi-structured data; non-relational databases and the economic factors involved in their selection and to techniques for analysing large amounts of data, the security issues and commercial factors involved with them.

This module develops students’ knowledge from first year study by introducing more complex accounting standards which enables them to prepare complete single entity financial statements or extracts thereof. The module introduces accounting concepts and ethical issues and begins to develop students critical thinking in this area.

This module seeks to provide students with an understanding of the role of securities markets in the global economy. This will be achieved through a presentation of their basic mechanisms and technical features, an explanation of the valuation of certain financial assets and an assessment of the operational and allocative efficiency of the markets. The module will be delivered via weekly small group face to face sessions and through weekly online lectures delivered asynchronously. Students will be directed to various media resources relevant to their day to day following and awareness of the activities of the global financial markets.

This module deals with the issues associated with the analysis, design, implementation and testing of significant computing systems (that is, systems that are too large to be designed and developed by a single person).

This module aims to increase students’ knowledge of financial accounting theory and its relevance to accounting practice. The module examines market for accounting information; processes and effects of regulating financial reporting; the incentives which drive managers’ choices of alternative accounting policies; unregulated financial reporting with specific focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting, capital markets’ response to accounting information; the critical perspectives of accounting and also considers a number of other important issues in financial reporting. Upon successful completion of this module, students should develop a good understanding of the role of financial accounting theory and its importance for accounting practice and reporting.

Business strategies and behaviour are part and parcel of dynamic interactions between a wide range of actors in the world economy. This module aims at producing the basic knowledge and skills for understanding that interaction, taking into consideration firms but clearly examining also other types of actors such as states, international organisations, labour and social movements. It does so by asking three sets of interrelated questions. Firstly, why do businesses internationalise their operations? What, and in relation to whom, can they gain from doing so? Secondly, how do transnational corporations operate across borders? How do these operations contribute to patterns of international development? Are these patterns smooth and harmonious (simple globalisation) or uneven? Thirdly, what is the current (and future) context in which transnational enterprise takes place? Recently, the 2007-09 global economic and financial crisis, the 4th Industrial Revolution, the climate change crisis and the global health crisis have transformed the dynamics of the world economy in a number of ways, and the module aims at enhancing knowledge of this new context of business. The module will also consider key phenomena ranging from the role of the BRIC economies in the future international economic order to gender. Throughout the module, we will consider political (power) and ethical issues, as they are fundamental to understanding the world economy, past, present and future.

This module covers the theory and practice of the application of tools to the software development lifecyle

​This module aims to provide a more in depth experience of crucial employability skills needed to secure either a placement or a graduate job.

COMP284 `Scripting Languages’ is one of several technical skills/employability skills modules offered in the second semester of the second year of study. It addresses both the demand by employers and the desire of students that students should encounter a range of programming languages during their studies and should be able to use these programming languages productively. Scripting languages have gained enormously in their popularity with the expansion and development of the world wide wide and world wide web technologies as they are now the predominant languages used in the development of web applications. The module will cover two scripting languages, namely, JavaScript and PHP. At the end of the module students should be able to develop applications, both web-based and computer-based, in them.

This module builds on COMP226 "Computer-based trading in financial markets", in which students learnt about the development of automated trading strategies in the R stastical programming environment. In COMP396, we wish to develop the skills and knowledge students gained from COMP226, and additionally to foster both self and peer guided learning and team work, under the guidance of a supervisor. Students are divided into teams, and each team is expected to work largely autonomously on the design of automated trading strategies using provided financial time series data. The trading strategies of the students will be evaluated on unseen parts of these financial time series, and the performance of the trading strategies will contribute towards the final mark of the students.

This module is an introduction to the area of algorithmic game theory, which is a novel area in the intersection of economics and computer science. It provides tools for dealing with and analysing problems related to applications motivated by the Internet. Examples involve various Internet auctions and e-commerce systems, like, Google’s sponsored search, Ebay auctions, recommendation systems, etc.

This module will provide an introduction to cloud computing. It will cover physical cloud infrastructure (data-centres, networks and servers), and the software stacks that run on it (containers, micro-services, orchestration and web frameworks).
During the course, students will assemble their own cloud-based application, which will be a webpage with a scalable micro-service-based backend.

In this module we introduce and study games that have some underlying network structure or that appear in auctions. A focus will be on scheduling and routing, as well as on the computational aspects in the design of mechanisms and auctions.

This module is the final module of a stream of 4 that cover financial reporting. This module therefore develops students understanding of financial reporting to a very high level by building upon the knowledge and skills gained in earlier financial reporting modules by covering more detailed and complex accounting standards. It will also develop an understanding of financial statement analysis using financial reporting and business strategy skills developed in this and earlier modules. Ethical and professional issues in financial reporting will also be considered.

Technology and especially the Internet is an essential tool for the modern business providing important connections to their customers and suppliers. However, it isn’t simply a case of deploying these technologies and hoping for benefit, you need to appreciate the possibilities they open up and align these possibilities to your organisational strategy. This module will open up the world of technology and its impact on business. The first half of the module will introduce the kind of technologies you are likely to meet in business and how they are being used currently. The module will then go on to explore concrete examples of e-business to examine how the student may exploit this opportunity in the future.

This module is designed to build upon the knowledge and skills gained in earlier financial reporting modules by covering the preparation of group financial statements including associates and joint ventures. It will also develop an understanding of group accounting principles and issues arising from group accounting including fair values, intangibles and impairment. The module also addresses other key accounting standards including those relating to leases, borrowing costs and related parties. The module should enable students to prepare complete single entity and consolidated financial statements, and extracts from those financial statements, covering a wide range of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).Students will also be required to explain accounting and reporting concepts and ethical issues, and the application of IFRS to specified single entity or group scenarios.

This module gives students an up-to-date coverage of global strategy and hands-on experience putting theory into practice. It sets new approaches such as institutional analysis alongside more traditional approaches based in economics and management. It also gives considerable attention to competition in and from emerging economies. At the end of the module, students are able to critically analyse the challenges and opportunities that a multinational enterprise (MNE) faces and the context in which these organizations make decisions. Assessment is through an individual report submitted at the end of the module.

Multi-agent systems have emerged as one of the most important areas of research and development in information technology in the 1990s. A multi-agent system is one composed of multiple interacting software components known as agents, which are typically capable of co-operating to solve problems that are beyond the abilities of any individual member. Multi-agent systems are important primarily because they have been found to have very wide applicability, in areas as diverse as industrial process control and electronic commerce. This module will begin by introducing the student to the notion of an agent, and will lead them to an understanding of what an agent is, how they can be constructed, and how agents can be made to co-operate effectively with one another to solve problems.

This module is an indepth tour over optimisation methods applied for various optimisation models. These methods are extensively used in both academic and industrial practices.​

The overall aim of this module is to introduce students to a range of advanced, near-research level topics in contemporary software engineering. The actual choice of topics will depend upon the interests of the lecturer and the topics current in the software engineering research literature at that time. The course will introduce issues from a problem (user-driven) perspective and a technology-driven perspective where users have new categories of software problems that they need to be solved, and where technology producers create technologies that present new opportunities for software products. It will be expected that students will read articles in the software engineering research literature, and will discuss these articles in a seminar-style forum.