Question 104 CAPM, payout policy, capital structure, Miller and Modigliani, risk
Assume that there exists a perfect world with no transaction costs, no asymmetric information, no taxes, no agency costs, equal borrowing rates for corporations and individual investors, the ability to short the risk free asset, semi-strong form efficient markets, the CAPM holds, investors are rational and risk-averse and there are no other market frictions.
For a firm operating in this perfect world, which statement(s) are correct?
(i) When a firm changes its capital structure and/or payout policy, share holders' wealth is unaffected.
(ii) When the idiosyncratic risk of a firm's assets increases, share holders do not expect higher returns.
(iii) When the systematic risk of a firm's assets increases, share holders do not expect higher returns.
Select the most correct response:
Unrestricted negative gearing is allowed in Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Negative gearing laws allow income losses on investment properties to be deducted from a tax-payer's pre-tax personal income. Negatively geared investors benefit from this tax advantage. They also hope to benefit from capital gains which exceed the income losses.
For example, a property investor buys an apartment funded by an interest only mortgage loan. Interest expense is $2,000 per month. The rental payments received from the tenant living on the property are $1,500 per month. The investor can deduct this income loss of $500 per month from his pre-tax personal income. If his personal marginal tax rate is 46.5%, this saves $232.5 per month in personal income tax.
The advantage of negative gearing is an example of the benefits of:
Question 320 foreign exchange rate, monetary policy, American and European terms
Investors expect the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to decrease the overnight cash rate at their next meeting.
Then unexpectedly, the RBA announce that they will keep the policy rate unchanged.
What do you expect to happen to Australia's exchange rate in the short term? The Australian dollar is likely to:
A man has taken a day off from his casual painting job to relax.
It's the end of the day and he's thinking about the hours that he could have spent working (in the past) which are now:
A stock has a beta of 1.5. The market's expected total return is 10% pa and the risk free rate is 5% pa, both given as effective annual rates.
Over the last year, bad economic news was released showing a higher chance of recession. Over this time the share market fell by 1%. So ##r_{m} = (P_{0} - P_{-1})/P_{-1} = -0.01##, where the current time is zero and one year ago is time -1. The risk free rate was unchanged.
What do you think was the stock's historical return over the last year, given as an effective annual rate?
A trader sells one crude oil European style put option contract on the CME expiring in one year with an exercise price of $44 per barrel for a price of $6.64. The crude oil spot price is $40.33. If the trader doesn’t close out her contract before maturity, then at maturity she will have the:
An equity index fund manager controls a USD1 billion diversified equity portfolio with a beta of 1.3. The equity manager fears that a global recession will begin in the next year, causing equity prices to tumble. The market does not think that this will happen. If the fund manager wishes to reduce her portfolio beta to 0.5, how many S&P500 futures should she sell?
The US market equity index is the S&P500. One year CME futures on the S&P500 currently trade at 2,062 points and the spot price is 2,091 points. Each point is worth $250. How many one year S&P500 futures contracts should the fund manager sell?
Question 778 CML, systematic and idiosyncratic risk, portfolio risk, CAPM
The capital market line (CML) is shown in the graph below. The total standard deviation is denoted by σ and the expected return is μ. Assume that markets are efficient so all assets are fairly priced.
Which of the below statements is NOT correct?
The below diagram shows a firm’s cash cycle.
Which of the following statements about companies’ cash cycle is NOT correct?
A non-dividend paying stock has a current price of $20.
The risk free rate is 5% pa given as a continuously compounded rate.
A 2 year futures contract on the stock has a futures price of $24.
You suspect that the futures contract is mis-priced and would like to conduct a risk-free arbitrage that requires zero capital. Which of the following steps about arbitraging the situation is NOT correct?