Kumu / Finance & Securities

International Finance & Securities

The FX Hedging project — AI + GitHub throughout: your firm is owed millions in a foreign currency, a year from now. Frame the exposure, design the hedge model on paper, have an AI build it from your spec, load live market data, then validate the whole chain by hand before making the call a CFO would sign off on.

Upper undergrad · 6 stages Design → Build → Validate

Stage 0 — get GitHub working, before the project

Every stage of this project is handed in by committing it to a public repository of your own, so the repository comes first — before the memo, before the spec, before any Excel. One sitting, once, and the rest of the term is about finance instead of tooling.

It comes in two parts: the account, then the workspace.

1

Part 1 — Get a GitHub account never used GitHub? start here

Create the account and learn the three verbs — add → commit → push. If you already have a GitHub account you can use that: sign in, add your hawaii.edu address, and go straight to part 2. If not, sign up with that hawaii.edu address — it is what unlocks GitHub Education.

account + mechanics
2

Part 2 — Set up your workspace

Stand up (or restructure) your public GitHub portfolio repo — the canonical skeleton every deliverable lands in, and a resume artifact by term's end.

8%repo URL

Part 1 in full: the Git mechanics walkthrough

Start Here → Git mechanics walks the whole workflow once: local versus remote, add → commit → push in the desktop app and on the command line, editing files straight on github.com, and fixes for the mistakes everyone makes the first time. Read it before part 2 — the stage page assumes you can already save work to a repo, and does not re-teach the mechanics.

0 of 6 stages complete

The learning path — stages 1 to 5

The spec comes before any Excel exists. You design the workbook — named ranges, tabs, formula logic, validation checks — and then an AI builds it from your document. The build tests your design; live market data (stage 4) tests the structure; the stage-5 validation tests everything. The AI does the assembly. You do the four things it can't do for you: specify, audit, populate, and verify by hand.

1

Executive Memo

Frame the FX receivable exposure for your CFO: what it is, why it's risky, and three hedge families with quick pros/cons.

17%.md memo
2

Model Specification

Design the workbook before it exists: named-range contract, tab architecture, formula logic, validation rules. In stage 3, an AI builds exactly what you wrote.

21%.md spec
3

AI-Assisted Build + Audit

Generate the workbook from your own spec — any AI tool, or by hand — then audit the output ruthlessly: ≥3 documented findings.

17%.xlsx + audit
4

Market Data + Population

Replace placeholders with live, sourced, timestamped market data — and find out whether your model survives contact with reality.

12%data memo
5

LLM Analysis & Validation

The capstone: a fresh LLM runs your spec + data memo cold; you reconcile, hand-verify, and ship the CFO recommendation.

25%2 memos

Stage weights are percentages of the project grade; the project's share of your course grade is in your offering syllabus.

Practice first

Interactive lab

FX Hedging Lab

Forward, money-market, and put-option hedges, the covered-interest-parity check, and the ±5% sensitivity grid with payoff chart — the workbook you'll spec at Stage 2, made live. It's also your Stage 4 check-figure oracle.

Required before Stage 3

AI Tools Lab

Required pre-reading before your Stage 3 build. The field guide to coding LLMs: chat vs "code" tools, web vs desktop vs CLI, and why giving the AI your repo beats pasting into a chat box.

The scenario

You're the treasury analyst. Your firm expects a large foreign-currency receivable (e.g., EUR 4.5M–20M, one year out, depending on your assigned scenario). If the euro weakens before settlement, your USD proceeds shrink — and the CFO wants to know what to do about it. Four tools are on the table:

StrategyWhat it doesThe trade-off
Forward contractLocks today's forward rate for the settlement dateTotal certainty, zero upside
Money-market hedgeBorrow FC now → convert at spot → invest USD (a synthetic forward)Should ≈ the forward (interest rate parity); uses balance-sheet capacity
Put optionBuys a floor under your USD proceeds; keeps the upsideThe premium — insurance isn't free
No hedgeTake whatever the spot rate is at settlementFull exposure, both directions

Try all four live in the FX Hedging Lab — same named ranges (FC_AMT, S0_in, F0_in…), same sensitivity range as your model. At stage 4 the lab becomes your check-figure oracle: enter your live inputs, and if the lab's outputs disagree with your workbook, one of them is wrong — find out which before you submit.

House rules