Courses for bourses

Shortage of trained professionals in the financial markets has prompted the need for specialised courses in stock markets and commodity training.

Institutes like the BLB Institute of Financial Markets (BIFM) have launched short-term job oriented diploma programmes and long term PGDM and MBA programmes in financial markets.

BIFM is one of the very few institutes offering full time courses in financial markets. The other courses available are mostly online courses in stock markets. G C Sharma, director, says there is a huge demand for these courses from the industry given the gap in the demand and supply for trained professionals in financial markets.

"Financial markets are booming. Initially people learnt stock markets by hit and trial method but now there is a need for trained professionals. The industry needs 50,000 people while there are just 10,000 professionals available. We need to bridge this gap."

The demand for trained professionals in the stock market will be 1 lakh by 2008-09, and 45,000 during 2007-08. In the commodity market, the demand will be1 lakh by 2008-09 and 75,000 by 2007-08, according to BIFM.

BIFM, a subsidiary of the BLB group, one of the corporate broking house, started offering specialised fnancial market courses from June, 2006.

The institute offers full-time diploma courses in stock market trading operations and management, commodity trading operations and management, stock analysis and portfolio management, technical analysis among others. The course duration is around four months.

"In the institute we provide high-end based practical training.We have practical labs and software to provide students actual live trading experience. Interactive training is given to equip students with a better understanding of theoretical concepts of capital and commodity markets," Sharma said.

The programmes provide exposure to learning, analysing and selecting stocks of NSE, BSE, NCDEX and MCX. The students get placed as dealers, jobbers, swing traders, arbitrageur, client relationship manager and commodity market dealer.

More than 400 students have been placed at the institute. Some of the top recruiters include Indiabulls, Angel Broking, IL&FS, Kotak securities and Chugh securities.

The salary levels for freshers ranges between Rs 20,000 and Rs 3 lakh per month through incentives after six months in the job.