Which one of the following bonds is trading at par?
Question 327 bill pricing, simple interest rate, no explanation
On 27/09/13, three month Swiss government bills traded at a yield of -0.2%, given as a simple annual yield. That is, interest rates were negative.
If the face value of one of these 90 day bills is CHF1,000,000 (CHF represents Swiss Francs, the Swiss currency), what is the price of one of these bills?
Stocks in the United States usually pay quarterly dividends. For example, the software giant Microsoft paid a $0.23 dividend every quarter over the 2013 financial year and plans to pay a $0.28 dividend every quarter over the 2014 financial year.
Using the dividend discount model and net present value techniques, calculate the stock price of Microsoft assuming that:
- The time now is the beginning of July 2014. The next dividend of $0.28 will be received in 3 months (end of September 2014), with another 3 quarterly payments of $0.28 after this (end of December 2014, March 2015 and June 2015).
- The quarterly dividend will increase by 2.5% every year, but each quarterly dividend over the year will be equal. So each quarterly dividend paid in the financial year beginning in September 2015 will be $ 0.287 ##(=0.28×(1+0.025)^1)##, with the last at the end of June 2016. In the next financial year beginning in September 2016 each quarterly dividend will be $0.294175 ##(=0.28×(1+0.025)^2)##, with the last at the end of June 2017, 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.
- 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 pig farmer in the US is worried about the price of hogs falling and wants to lock in a price now. In one year the pig farmer intends to sell 1,000,000 pounds of hogs. Luckily, one year CME lean hog futures expire on the exact day that he wishes to sell his pigs. The futures have a notional principal of 40,000 pounds (about 18 metric tons) and currently trade at a price of 63.85 cents per pound. The underlying lean hogs spot price is 77.15 cents per pound. The correlation between the futures price and the underlying hogs price is one and the standard deviations are both 4 cents per pound. The initial margin is USD1,500 and the maintenance margin is USD1,200 per futures contract.
Which of the below statements is NOT correct?
Question 704 utility, risk aversion, utility function, gamble
Mr Blue, Miss Red and Mrs Green are people with different utility functions.
Each person has $256 of initial wealth. A coin toss game is offered to each person at a casino where the player can win or lose $256. Each player can flip a coin and if they flip heads, they receive $256. If they flip tails then they will lose $256. Which of the following statements is NOT correct?
Question 744 income and capital returns, real and nominal returns and cash flows, inflation
If someone says "my shares rose by 10% last year", what do you assume that they mean? The effective annual:
Question 758 time calculation, fully amortising loan, no explanation
Two years ago you entered into a fully amortising home loan with a principal of $1,000,000, an interest rate of 6% pa compounding monthly with a term of 25 years.
Then interest rates suddenly fall to 4.5% pa (t=0), but you continue to pay the same monthly home loan payments as you did before. How long will it now take to pay off your home loan? Measure the time taken to pay off the home loan from the current time which is 2 years after the home loan was first entered into.
Assume that the lower interest rate was given to you immediately after the loan repayment at the end of year 2, which was the 24th payment since the loan was granted. Also assume that rates were and are expected to remain constant.
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.