For a price of $100, Vera will sell you a 2 year bond paying semi-annual coupons of 10% pa. The face value of the bond is $100. Other bonds with similar risk, maturity and coupon characteristics trade at a yield of 8% pa.
Harvey Norman the large retailer often runs sales advertising 2 years interest free when you purchase its products. This offer can be seen as a free personal loan from Harvey Norman to its customers.
Assume that banks charge an interest rate on personal loans of 12% pa given as an APR compounding per month. This is the interest rate that Harvey Norman deserves on the 2 year loan it extends to its customers. Therefore Harvey Norman must implicitly include the cost of this loan in the advertised sale price of its goods.
If you were a customer buying from Harvey Norman, and you were paying immediately, not in 2 years, what is the minimum percentage discount to the advertised sale price that you would insist on? (Hint: if it makes it easier, assume that you’re buying a product with an advertised price of $100).
A highly levered risky firm is trying to raise more debt. The types of debt being considered, in no particular order, are senior bonds, junior bonds, bank accepted bills, promissory notes and bank loans.
Which of these forms of debt is the safest from the perspective of the debt investors who are thinking of investing in the firm's new debt?
Your main expense is fuel for your car which costs $100 per month. You just refueled, so you won't need any more fuel for another month (first payment at t=1 month).
You have $2,500 in a bank account which pays interest at a rate of 6% pa, payable monthly. Interest rates are not expected to change.
Assuming that you have no income, in how many months time will you not have enough money to fully refuel your car?
Stocks in the United States usually pay quarterly dividends. For example, the retailer Wal-Mart Stores paid a $0.47 dividend every quarter over the 2013 calendar year and plans to pay a $0.48 dividend every quarter over the 2014 calendar year.
Using the dividend discount model and net present value techniques, calculate the stock price of Wal-Mart Stores assuming that:
- The time now is the beginning of January 2014. The next dividend of $0.48 will be received in 3 months (end of March 2014), with another 3 quarterly payments of $0.48 after this (end of June, September and December 2014).
- The quarterly dividend will increase by 2% every year, but each quarterly dividend over the year will be equal. So each quarterly dividend paid in 2015 will be $0.4896 (##=0.48×(1+0.02)^1##), with the first at the end of March 2015 and the last at the end of December 2015. In 2016 each quarterly dividend will be $0.499392 (##=0.48×(1+0.02)^2##), with the first at the end of March 2016 and the last at the end of December 2016, and so on forever.
- The total required return on equity is 6% pa.
- The required return and growth rate are given as effective annual rates.
- All cash flows and rates are nominal. Inflation is 3% pa.
- Dividend payment dates and ex-dividend dates are at the same time.
- Remember that there are 4 quarters in a year and 3 months in a quarter.
What is the current stock price?
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:
"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?
Question 787 fixed for floating interest rate swap, intermediated swap
The below table summarises the borrowing costs confronting two companies A and B.
| Bond Market Yields | ||||
| Fixed Yield to Maturity (%pa) | Floating Yield (%pa) | |||
| Firm A | 2 | L - 0.1 | ||
| Firm B | 2.5 | L | ||
Firm A wishes to borrow at a floating rate and Firm B wishes to borrow at a fixed rate. Design an intermediated swap (which means there will actually be two swaps) that nets a bank 0.15% and grants the remaining swap benefits to Firm A only. Which of the following statements about the swap is NOT correct?
Question 790 mean and median returns, return distribution, arithmetic and geometric averages, continuously compounding rate, log-normal distribution, VaR, confidence interval
A risk manager has identified that their hedge fund’s continuously compounded portfolio returns are normally distributed with a mean of 10% pa and a standard deviation of 30% pa. The hedge fund’s portfolio is currently valued at $100 million. Assume that there is no estimation error in these figures and that the normal cumulative density function at 1.644853627 is 95%.
Which of the following statements is NOT correct? All answers are rounded to the nearest dollar.