Question 100 market efficiency, technical analysis, joint hypothesis problem
A company selling charting and technical analysis software claims that independent academic studies have shown that its software makes significantly positive abnormal returns. Assuming the claim is true, which statement(s) are correct?
(I) Weak form market efficiency is broken.
(II) Semi-strong form market efficiency is broken.
(III) Strong form market efficiency is broken.
(IV) The asset pricing model used to measure the abnormal returns (such as the CAPM) had mis-specification error so the returns may not be abnormal but rather fair for the level of risk.
Select the most correct response:
Three important classes of investable risky assets are:
- Corporate debt which has low total risk,
- Real estate which has medium total risk,
- Equity which has high total risk.
Assume that the correlation between total returns on:
- Corporate debt and real estate is 0.1,
- Corporate debt and equity is 0.1,
- Real estate and equity is 0.5.
You are considering investing all of your wealth in one or more of these asset classes. Which portfolio will give the lowest total risk? You are restricted from shorting any of these assets. Disregard returns and the risk-return trade-off, pretend that you are only concerned with minimising risk.
Question 345 capital budgeting, break even, NPV
| Project Data | ||
| Project life | 10 yrs | |
| Initial investment in factory | $10m | |
| Depreciation of factory per year | $1m | |
| Expected scrap value of factory at end of project | $0 | |
| Sale price per unit | $10 | |
| Variable cost per unit | $6 | |
| Fixed costs per year, paid at the end of each year | $2m | |
| Interest expense per year | 0 | |
| Tax rate | 30% | |
| Cost of capital per annum | 10% | |
Notes
- The firm's current liabilities are forecast to stay at $0.5m. The firm's current assets (mostly inventory) is currently $1m, but is forecast to grow by $0.1m at the end of each year due to the project.
At the end of the project, the current assets accumulated due to the project can be sold for the same price that they were bought. - A marketing survey was used to forecast sales. It cost $1.4m which was just paid. The cost has been capitalised by the accountants and is tax-deductible over the life of the project, regardless of whether the project goes ahead or not. This amortisation expense is not included in the depreciation expense listed in the table above.
Assumptions
- All cash flows occur at the start or end of the year as appropriate, not in the middle or throughout the year.
- All rates and cash flows are real. The inflation rate is 3% pa.
- All rates are given as effective annual rates.
Find the break even unit production (Q) per year to achieve a zero Net Income (NI) and Net Present Value (NPV), respectively. The answers below are listed in the same order.
What is the covariance of a variable X with a constant C?
The cov(X, C) or ##\sigma_{X,C}## equals:
What is the correlation of a variable X with a constant C?
The corr(X, C) or ##\rho_{X,C}## equals:
Question 659 APR, effective rate, effective rate conversion, no explanation
A home loan company advertises an interest rate of 9% pa, payable monthly. Which of the following statements about the interest rate is NOT correct? All rates are given with an accuracy of 4 decimal places.
Question 703 utility, risk aversion, utility function, gamble
Mr Blue, Miss Red and Mrs Green are people with different utility functions.
Each person has $500 of initial wealth. A coin toss game is offered to each person at a casino where the player can win or lose $500. Each player can flip a coin and if they flip heads, they receive $500. If they flip tails then they will lose $500. Which of the following statements is NOT correct?
Question 742 price gains and returns over time, no explanation
For an asset's price to quintuple (be five times as big, say from $1 to $5) every 5 years, what must be its effective annual capital return?
"Buy low, sell high" is a well-known saying. It suggests that investors should buy low then sell high, in that order.
How would you re-phrase that saying to describe short selling?