Question 96 bond pricing, zero coupon bond, term structure of interest rates, forward interest rate
An Australian company just issued two bonds paying semi-annual coupons:
- 1 year zero coupon bond at a yield of 8% pa, and a
- 2 year zero coupon bond at a yield of 10% pa.
What is the forward rate on the company's debt from years 1 to 2? Give your answer as an APR compounding every 6 months, which is how the above bond yields are quoted.
Question 119 market efficiency, fundamental analysis, joint hypothesis problem
Your friend claims that by reading 'The Economist' magazine's economic news articles, she can identify shares that will have positive abnormal expected returns over the next 2 years. Assuming that her claim is true, which statement(s) are correct?
(i) Weak form market efficiency is broken.
(ii) Semi-strong form market efficiency is broken.
(iii) Strong form market efficiency is broken.
(iv) The asset pricing model used to measure the abnormal returns (such as the CAPM) is either wrong (mis-specification error) or is measured using the wrong inputs (data errors) so the returns may not be abnormal but rather fair for the level of risk.
Select the most correct response:
A 2 year corporate bond yields 3% pa with a coupon rate of 5% pa, paid semi-annually.
Find the effective monthly rate, effective six month rate, and effective annual rate.
##r_\text{eff monthly}##, ##r_\text{eff 6 month}##, ##r_\text{eff annual}##.
One and a half years ago Frank bought a house for $600,000. Now it's worth only $500,000, based on recent similar sales in the area.
The expected total return on Frank's residential property is 7% pa.
He rents his house out for $1,600 per month, paid in advance. Every 12 months he plans to increase the rental payments.
The present value of 12 months of rental payments is $18,617.27.
The future value of 12 months of rental payments one year in the future is $19,920.48.
What is the expected annual rental yield of the property? Ignore the costs of renting such as maintenance, real estate agent fees and so on.
Private equity firms are known to buy medium sized private companies operating in the same industry, merge them together into a larger company, and then sell it off in a public float (initial public offering, IPO).
If medium-sized private companies trade at PE ratios of 5 and larger listed companies trade at PE ratios of 15, what return can be achieved from this strategy?
Assume that:
- The medium-sized companies can be bought, merged and sold in an IPO instantaneously.
- There are no costs of finding, valuing, merging and restructuring the medium sized companies. Also, there is no competition to buy the medium-sized companies from other private equity firms.
- The large merged firm's earnings are the sum of the medium firms' earnings.
- The only reason for the difference in medium and large firm's PE ratios is due to the illiquidity of the medium firms' shares.
- Return is defined as: ##r_{0→1} = (p_1-p_0+c_1)/p_0## , where time zero is just before the merger and time one is just after.
Question 498 NPV, Annuity, perpetuity with growth, multi stage growth model
A business project is expected to cost $100 now (t=0), then pay $10 at the end of the third (t=3), fourth, fifth and sixth years, and then grow by 5% pa every year forever. So the cash flow will be $10.5 at the end of the seventh year (t=7), then $11.025 at the end of the eighth year (t=8) and so on perpetually. The total required return is 10℅ pa.
Which of the following formulas will NOT give the correct net present value of the project?
The price of gold is currently $700 per ounce. The forward price for delivery in 1 year is $800. An arbitrageur can borrow money at 10% per annum given as an effective discrete annual rate. Assume that gold is fairly priced and the cost of storing gold is zero.
What is the best way to conduct an arbitrage in this situation? The best arbitrage strategy requires zero capital, has zero risk and makes money straight away. An arbitrageur should sell 1 forward on gold and:
Question 703 utility, risk aversion, utility function, gamble
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?
Being long a call and short a put which have the same exercise prices and underlying stock is equivalent to being: