Wolfram Demonstrations Project Digital Technologies in the Study of Portfolio Theory at the Higher School of Economics

Abstract

The article substantiates the importance of portfolio theory for the development of modern professional competence of an economist, indicates the demand for digital tools for making financial decisions and the need to find ways to improve the educational process based on the use of digital tools. The study highlights the content and methodological features of portfolio theory for the methodically appropriate use of Wolfram technologies in the educational process on the topic "Portfolio theory". Such features include: the use of real financial data to build portfolio models; the construction and visualization of various portfolios of financial instruments (acceptable portfolios, optimal portfolios, equally weighted portfolios, diversified portfolios, etc.); the need to track the dynamics of the characteristics of a portfolio of financial instruments; the demand for competencies in the field of investment theory and finance to study portfolio theory; disclosure the concept of "Optimal portfolio of financial instruments" taking into account the achievements of modern financial science; the connection of portfolio theory with issues of investment philosophy and investment strategy; the focus on the development of students' holistic ideas about the portfolio management process; the development of students' ideas about the criteria assessment of financial instruments and portfolios of financial instruments; a significant number of special cases arising in the process of building and researching portfolios of financial instruments. Taking into account the didactic needs and computational capabilities of the Wolfram Demonstration Project, as well as the capabilities for visualizing objects, new applied tasks have been developed: the task of building and visualizing a variety of various portfolios determined by the quantitative characteristics of thirty pre-selected financial instruments (quotes of which are obtained from the financial portal); the task of building and visualizing an equally weighted portfolio, the quantitative characteristics of which are determined by based on real data obtained from the financial portal; the task of determining the effective boundary of a set of portfolios based on real data obtained from a financial portal; the task of constructing a capital market line obtained from real data from a financial portal and the task of presenting and analyzing the trajectory of a portfolio of two financial instruments depending on the correlation of their returns. The results of experimental work on the introduction of Wolfram technologies into the educational process indicate their high didactic potential - for example, consideration of these tasks based on real financial data, without the involvement of digital technologies, is not possible. The expected result and its methodological significance in the context of the development of professional competence in the field of making optimal financial decisions are aligned with each applied task in the research process. The material of the article can be useful for improving the professional training of graduates of the Higher School of Economics.