# Exam Preparation

This page provides a running outline of what will be covered on each exam.

## Midterm Exam

The midterm covers material from **Weeks 1--4**, including all lecture notes, in-class discussions, and homework assignments **HW 0 through HW 3**.

### Online Notes

We may not cover every page of the online notes during class. **All material in the course notes is fair game for the midterm and final exams**, including pages not explicitly discussed in class. You are responsible for reading the full notes on your own.

### Required "Reading" from Homework Assignments

Each homework assignment includes a Required "Reading" section. All material from those sections (HW 0 through HW 3) may appear on the midterm.

### Papers

The following papers may be covered on the midterm:

- Bybee, L., Kelly, B., Manela, A., & Xiu, D. (2024). [Business News and Business Cycles.](references/bybee_et_al_2024_business_news_and_business_cycles.pdf) *Journal of Finance, 79*(5), 3105--3147. <https://doi.org/10.1111/jofi.13377>
- Bybee, L., Kelly, B., & Su, Y. (2023). [Narrative Asset Pricing: Interpretable Systematic Risk Factors from News Text.](references/bybee_kelly_su_2023_narrative_asset_pricing.pdf) *The Review of Financial Studies, 36*(12), 4759--4787. <https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/hhad042>
- Chen, Y., Kelly, B., & Xiu, D. (2022). [Expected Returns and Large Language Models.](references/chen_kelly_xiu_2022_expected_returns_and_large_language_models.pdf) <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4416687>
- He, S., Lv, L., Manela, A., & Wu, J. (2025). [Chronologically Consistent Large Language Models.](references/He%20et%20al.%20-%202025%20-%20Chronologically%20Consistent%20Large%20Language%20Models.pdf) <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.21206>
- He, S., Lv, L., Manela, A., & Wu, J. (2025). [Instruction Tuning Chronologically Consistent Language Models.](references/He%20et%20al.%20-%202025%20-%20Instruction%20Tuning%20Chronologically%20Consistent%20Language%20Models.pdf) <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.11677>
- Liu, Z., Huang, D., Huang, K., Li, Z., & Zhao, J. (2020). [FinBERT: A pre-trained financial language representation model for financial text mining.](references/Liu%20et%20al.%20-%202020%20-%20FinBERT%20A%20pre-trained%20financial%20language%20representation%20model%20for%20financial%20text%20mining.pdf) *IJCAI International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2021-Janua*, 4513--4519. <https://doi.org/10.24963/IJCAI.2020/622>
- Lopez-Lira, A., Tang, Y., et al. (2023). [Can ChatGPT Forecast Stock Price Movements? Return Predictability and Large Language Models.](references/lopez-lira_tang_2023.pdf) *SSRN Electronic Journal.* <https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4412788>

## Final Exam

The final exam is **cumulative**. All material from the midterm is fair game, in addition to material covered in the second half of the course. All homework assignments are also fair game for the final.

### Required "Reading" from Homework Assignments

All Required "Reading" from all homework assignments may appear on the final exam.

### Papers

All papers listed under the midterm section above may appear on the final, plus any additional papers listed below.

*Additional papers for the final will be posted here as the course progresses.*