Fight Finance

The required return of a project is 10%, given as an effective annual rate. Assume that the cash flows shown in the table are paid all at once at the given point in time.

What is the Profitability Index (PI) of the project?

All things remaining equal, the variance of a portfolio of two positively-weighted stocks rises as:

An industrial chicken farmer grows chickens for their meat. Chickens:

1. Cost $0.50 each to buy as chicks. They are bought on the day they’re born, at t=0.
2. Grow at a rate of $0.70 worth of meat per chicken per week for the first 6 weeks (t=0 to t=6).
3. Grow at a rate of $0.40 worth of meat per chicken per week for the next 4 weeks (t=6 to t=10) since they’re older and grow more slowly.
4. Feed costs are $0.30 per chicken per week for their whole life. Chicken feed is bought and fed to the chickens once per week at the beginning of the week. So the first amount of feed bought for a chicken at t=0 costs $0.30, and so on.
5. Can be slaughtered (killed for their meat) and sold at no cost at the end of the week. The price received for the chicken is their total value of meat (note that the chicken grows fast then slow, see above).

The required return of the chicken farm is 0.5% given as an effective weekly rate.

Ignore taxes and the fixed costs of the factory. Ignore the chicken’s welfare and other environmental and ethical concerns.

Find the equivalent weekly cash flow of slaughtering a chicken at 6 weeks and at 10 weeks so the farmer can figure out the best time to slaughter his chickens. The choices below are given in the same order, 6 and 10 weeks.

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?

An investor owns an empty block of land that has local government approval to be developed into a petrol station, car wash or car park. The council will only allow a single development so the projects are mutually exclusive.

All of the development projects have the same risk and the required return of each is 10% pa. Each project has an immediate cost and once construction is finished in one year the land and development will be sold. The table below shows the estimated costs payable now, expected sale prices in one year and the internal rates of returns (IRR's).

Which project should the investor accept?

What is the correlation of a variable X with a constant C?

The corr(X, C) or ##\rho_{X,C}## equals:

Mr Blue, Miss Red and Mrs Green are people with different utility functions.

Each person has $500 of initial wealth. A coin toss game is offered to each person at a casino where the player can win or lose $500. Each player can flip a coin and if they flip heads, they receive $500. If they flip tails then they will lose $500. Which of the following statements is NOT correct?

What derivative position are you exposed to if you have the obligation to sell the underlying asset at maturity, so you will definitely be forced to sell the underlying asset?

Which of the following statements about bond convexity is NOT correct?

Margin loans secured by listed stock have a Basel III risk weight of 20%.

For margin loans that cannot be immediately cancelled by banks and asked to be repaid, the credit conversion factor (CCF) is 20%.

Suppose you have a stock portfolio worth $500,000, financed by:

• $300,000 of your own money; and
• $200,000 of the bank’s funds in the form of a margin loan which can only be cancelled by the bank after 5 days notice. The margin loan’s maximum LVR is 70%.

How much regulatory capital must the bank hold due to your margin loan? Assume that the bank wishes to pay dividends to its shareholders, so include the 2.5% capital conservation buffer in your calculations.