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:
An equity index is currently at 5,200 points. The 6 month futures price is 5,300 points and the total required return is 6% pa with continuous compounding. Each index point is worth $25.
What is the implied dividend yield as a continuously compounded rate per annum?
A firm has a debt-to-assets ratio of 20%. What is its debt-to-equity ratio?
A company conducts a 2 for 3 rights issue at a subscription price of $8 when the pre-announcement stock price was $9. Assume that all investors use their rights to buy those extra shares.
What is the percentage increase in the stock price and the number of shares outstanding? The answers are given in the same order.
The standard deviation of monthly changes in the spot price of corn is 50 cents per bushel. The standard deviation of monthly changes in the futures price of corn is 40 cents per bushel. The correlation between the spot price of corn and the futures price of corn is 0.9.
It is now March. A corn chip manufacturer is committed to buying 250,000 bushels of corn in May. The spot price of corn is 381 cents per bushel and the June futures price is 399 cents per bushel.
The corn chip manufacturer wants to use the June corn futures contracts to hedge his risk. Each futures contract is for the delivery of 5,000 bushels of corn. One bushel is about 127 metric tons.
How many corn futures should the corn chip manufacturer buy to hedge his risk? Round your answer to the nearest whole number of contracts. Remember to tail the hedge.
A 4.5% fixed coupon Australian Government bond was issued at par in mid-April 2009. Coupons are paid semi-annually in arrears in mid-April and mid-October each year. The face value is $1,000. The bond will mature in mid-April 2020, so the bond had an original tenor of 11 years.
Today is mid-September 2015 and similar bonds now yield 1.9% pa.
What is the bond's new price? Note: there are 10 semi-annual coupon payments remaining from now (mid-September 2015) until maturity (mid-April 2020); 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.
Which of the following statements about the Basel 3 minimum capital requirements is NOT correct? Common equity tier 1 (CET1) comprises the highest quality components of capital that fully satisfy all of the following characteristics:
Question 921 utility, return distribution, log-normal distribution, arithmetic and geometric averages, no explanation
Who was the first theorist to propose the idea of ‘expected utility’?
Question 975 comparative advantage in trade, production possibilities curve, no explanation
Arthur and Bindi are the only people on a remote island.
Luckily there are Coconut and Date palm trees on the island that grow delicious fruit. The problem is that harvesting the fruit takes a lot of work.
Arthur can pick 1 coconut per hour, 4 dates per hour or any linear combination of coconuts and dates. For example, he could pick 0.5 coconuts and 2 dates per hour.
Bindi can pick 2 coconuts per hour, 1 date per hour or any linear combination. For example, she could pick 0.5 coconuts and 0.75 dates per hour.
This information is summarised in the table and graph:
| Harvest Rates Per Hour | ||
| Coconuts | Dates | |
| Arthur | 1 | 4 |
| Bindi | 2 | 1 |
Which of the following statements is NOT correct?