Fight Finance

The following equation is the Dividend Discount Model, also known as the 'Gordon Growth Model' or the 'Perpetuity with growth' equation.

### p_{0} = \frac{c_1}{r_{\text{eff}} - g_{\text{eff}}} ###

What is the discount rate '## r_\text{eff} ##' in this equation?

You just signed up for a 30 year fully amortising mortgage loan with monthly payments of $1,500 per month. The interest rate is 9% pa which is not expected to change.

To your surprise, you can actually afford to pay $2,000 per month and your mortgage allows early repayments without fees. If you maintain these higher monthly payments, how long will it take to pay off your mortgage?

A firm pays a fully franked cash dividend of $70 to one of its Australian shareholders who has a personal marginal tax rate of 45%. The corporate tax rate is 30%.

What will be the shareholder's personal tax payable due to the dividend payment?

You are an equities analyst trying to value the equity of the Australian telecoms company Telstra, with ticker TLS. In Australia, listed companies like Telstra tend to pay dividends every 6 months. The payment around August is called the final dividend and the payment around February is called the interim dividend. Both occur annually.

• Today is mid-March 2015.
• TLS's last interim dividend of $0.15 was one month ago in mid-February 2015.
• TLS's last final dividend of $0.15 was seven months ago in mid-August 2014.

Judging by TLS's dividend history and prospects, you estimate that the nominal dividend growth rate will be 1% pa. Assume that TLS's total nominal cost of equity is 6% pa. The dividends are nominal cash flows and the inflation rate is 2.5% pa. All rates are quoted as nominal effective annual rates. Assume that each month is exactly one twelfth (1/12) of a year, so you can ignore the number of days in each month.

Calculate the current TLS share price.

How many years will it take for an asset's price to quadruple (be four times as big, say from $1 to $4) if the price grows by 15% pa?

Which of the below formulas gives the profit ##(\pi)## from being short a put option? Let the underlying asset price at maturity be ##S_T##, the exercise price be ##X_T## and the option price be ##f_{LP,0}##. Note that ##S_T##, ##X_T## and ##f_{LP,0}## are all positive numbers.

A stock has an arithmetic average continuously compounded return (AALGDR) of 10% pa, a standard deviation of continuously compounded returns (SDLGDR) of 80% pa and current stock price of $1. Assume that stock prices are log-normally distributed. The graph below summarises this information and provides some helpful formulas.

In one year, what do you expect the median and mean prices to be? The answer options are given in the same order.

An investor bought a 5 year government bond with a 2% pa coupon rate at par. Coupons are paid semi-annually. The face value is $100.

Calculate the bond's new price 8 months later after yields have increased to 3% pa. Note that both yields are given as APR's compounding semi-annually. Assume that the yield curve was flat before the change in yields, and remained flat afterwards as well.

The below table shows Australian monetary aggregates. Note that ‘M3’ is the sum of all the figures in the table and ‘ADI’ stands for Authorised Deposit-taking Institution such as a bank, building society or credit union.

Source: RBA Statistical Table D3 Monetary Aggregates.

Which of the following statements is NOT correct?

Suppose the market expects the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to increase their short term interest rate by 15 basis points at their next meeting. The current short term interest rate is -0.1% pa and the exchange rate is 100 JPY per USD.

As expected, the BoJ announce that they will increase short term interest rate by 15 basis points.

What do you expect to happen to Japan’s exchange rate on the day when the announcement is made? The Japanese Yen (JPY) is likely to: