ECON 4340

Honestly, this class wasn't that bad - I don't know what the hollering is about. Here was my three step process to do well in this class (without attending a single lecture): 1. Everything comes from the textbook chapters. Read them and outline the big items. This will be your only work in the class. 2. PowerPoint slides. Literally all of the 'key words' come from here. 3. Don't go to lecture - they're useless. One time during a test review he talked about his stock picks the entire time. All in all, this class really just teaches you about investment in portfolios (big picture), but I still thoroughly enjoyed the class. This class is literally just definitions - if you have a good memory, you'll do fine. I also knew nothing about finance going in, and I really do think that if your in the same boat you'll come out with a solid foundation of understanding.

This course is honestly terrible. You will have covered very little material in class because professor Burton tends to spend about 45 minutes a class telling stories about himself. The exams come from a textbook (written by Burton) that does a horrible job defining terms properly. Basically be prepared to memorize vocabulary words from the chapters. The class requires 0 outside work but is definitely not worth taking. Pretty disappointing that UVA would allow a course like this to have been taught for so long.

Professor Burton is a great guy and has more finance experience than anyone else at this school, but that does not make him a great professor. As nice as he is (takes students out to lunch just to get to know them throughout the semester), I did not find his lectures beneficial towards my understanding of the material. The most useful reason for going was that so I could know what would be on the exams. Even so, the exams were rather arbitrary. Our second exam was one page of paper front and back and testing us on very specific topics, despite the large amount of content that was supposed to be on it. Also, the grading is pretty rigid. If you aren't word for word from the textbook (which he wrote, and is relatively straightforward), you'll get points taken off. In my opinion, this is not a productive way of testing students. I found myself studying for hours just to memorize words instead of actually trying to understand the concepts. To be quite frank, I'm coming away with this class with little memory of anything, other than Burton's many life stories – which are great.

If you're good at memorization, this class will be good. Just read his textbook and memorize word for word the assigned chapters. The content is tricky at times, but overall pretty straightforward. Minimal calculations, more just definitions and concepts (CAPM, futures & forwards, duration, default-free vs. risk-free, etc.). Also, if you're someone who hates busywork than you'll like this class. All you have are two midterms and a final exam, no weekly responses, problem sets, or discussion sections.

To get an A in this class, read and memorize his textbook, look over his PPTs, go to class the day before the exam to hear what he has to say about content, and have lunch with him. At the end of the day, Professor Burton does seem to care about his students and he does have so much experience in the financial world. There is a lot to be learned from him, maybe not necessarily when it comes to financial markets, but more when it comes to life.

This class was honestly not bad at all. I don't know why there are so many negative reviews. This class has no homework so I didn't do much work for it other than studying for the exams. Just two midterms, each weighted 30% of our grade, and a final worth 40%. The class itself was a little boring and tended to go off-topic. We learned many things that we weren't going to be tested on, but the exams were not nearly as bad as some of my other econ classes and they're curved pretty generously. Professor Burton also does a brief review session before each exam which gave us a pretty good idea of what topics to focus on. The final was cumulative but we didn't really get tested on much of what we learned after Thanksgiving (I'd say 1/5th of the final was new content). Overall, it was one of my easier 4000-level electives. Just study what he says during the review + some vocab terms from the textbook and you'll most likely be fine. #tCFF23

I will try to make this as comprehensive a review as possible. I will try to remain unbiased even though I loved the course and Professor Burton. The idea of this review is to present all information you should have since there is a lot of conflicting stories. The first part will focus on Burton as a prof (which I will also post on his other class ECON 437) and then the second part will focus on this course specifically.

**All about Professor Burton** - This applies to both ECON 434 and 437

Lecture style: Professor Burton is very knowledgable in this subject, having taught it many times and having worked on the Street himself. Because of this his lectures are in tune with what I -- and maybe you -- imagine old school high level classes to be like. He posts slides that he rarely actually uses and more so talks about the subject matter. This is probably the first point of contention people have and you have read about him. The best way I can describe his class in one sentence is: if you view going to class as a machine where you input your time and through listening to him explain the subject you output a grade, this is not the class for you. As you can see in the grade distribution it is hard to get lower than a B. You can easily get an A by just reading his book. His book is the most important thing for the exam. He wrote it and has used it for years for this course so you can imagine that he will want you to word things how he words them in the book -- and in class -- when giving answers on the exams. I will touch more on the exams later. This was a long winded way of saying that if you go to class treat it like a seminar where you essentially get to hear a very knowledgable guest speaker talk about theory of financial markets and often about the current state of financial markets. Again, he does sometimes include pieces of information such as how to word an idea on an exam. In summary, I believe people find his lectures boring because he does not always talk about things that will be on the exam.

Style of exams (still applies to both classes):
You will have 2 midterms and a final that are weighted 30%, 30%, and 40% respectively. The most annoying thing about these classes is the arbitrary grading. I took these classes with a friend and we would often say very similar if not the same things on exams and the grader would mark them differently. It seems that there may be a keyword that he wants you to mention. I do want to say that this should not be the deciding factor in taking vs not taking his class as he has mentioned that he is working on that. This also produces a relatively small variance in your numerical grade. In other words if you put the effort in to get an A, this grading inconsistency will not get you a B.

Interacting with students:
He is extremely nice and offers students to go to lunch with him on Tuesday and Wednesday (this may change if his new condo is built by the time you take the class). You go to Farmington and he talks about life and asks you about yourself. If the topics are finance focused it is more so about subjects not directly about class. I recommend doing this multiple times as it seems not many people take advantage of it and it will allow him to get to know you better.

Grading (again same for 434 and 437):
This is another one of the most annoying parts of his class. This, in my opinion, is more psychologically annoying but unless you plan to change your effort in a class by your grade it is pretty inconsequential. Basically you get your numerical score (out of 100 points) back on midterms, but the class is curved so if you do better than average you get some form of A (A, A-, etc.,) and below average is the same for a B. No offense to anyone who got a C but he alludes to the fact that you really have to suck to get a C. He does the grading at the end of the semester so you may not know where you stand until then. When I took 434 he would tell us the average of the midterms so you kind of knew but for 437 he hasn't told us at all.

Content (434 specific):
Midterm 1 content is all about fixed-income assets. You go over duration and duration risk. How treasuries are priced and how and when coupons are paid on them. He provides equations for the duration of a bond but you don't need to do the math in the exam, just give a realistic answer (he gives examples in class).
Midterm 2 content is all about equities, specifically the CAPM. You need to know the people he talks about: Markowitz, Tobin, and Sharpe. The questions he gave on this exam were extremely open-ended so you needed to brain-dump everything you knew about them in order to reach how the CAPM came about.
The final includes midterm 1 and 2 content but was weighted more heavily towards derivatives. Knowing what an option, future/ forward, and a swap.

Target Audience: Finance people
It is a really interesting class and Prof. Burton has a massive network that you can leverage for the job search. He likes to help you in your career, but he doesn't like it if that is the only reason you are going to talk to him. The course material is not that hard. The problem is you have to be ready to learn it on your own. Most of the material is pretty easy to understand if you already have studied for finance related jobs. The exams are solely based off his book which he will tell you to buy. All you have to do it read that and you will get an A. The grading scale is the course is really up to Burton at the end of the semester, but if you go to class and listen to his stories and he knows your name you will be just fine.

This course was a bit different. Prof. Burton is great, knowledgeable and genuinely cares about his students. However, content he talks about in lecture is like a story time, and not really what you are tested on. Ultimately, it is up to you whether you think lecture is worth attending. You can learn all the content from his textbook that you SHOULD buy! It is pretty easy to digest and written at a 3rd grade level... but very helpful. Your grade is entirely exams... the exams aren't too bad; mostly just definitions and describing financial theory.