Fight Finance

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.

(a) 6.01%

(b) 6.02%

(c) 9.20%

(d) 12.02%

(e) 18.40%

Question 156  APR, effective rate

A 2 year government bond yields 5% pa with a coupon rate of 6% pa, paid semi-annually.

Find the effective six month rate, effective annual rate and the effective daily rate. Assume that each month has 30 days and that there are 360 days in a year.

All answers are given in the same order:

##r_\text{eff semi-annual}##, ##r_\text{eff yrly}##, ##r_\text{eff daily}##.

(a) 0.024695, 0.05, 0.000136.

(b) 0.025, 0.050625, 0.000137.

(c) 0.029563, 0.06, 0.000162.

(d) 0.03, 0.06, 0.000167.

(e) 0.03, 0.0609, 0.000164.

Question 189  IRR

A project has the following cash flows:

Project Cash Flows
Time (yrs)	Cash flow ($)
0	-400
1	0
2	500

The required return on the project is 10%, given as an effective annual rate.

What is the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of this project? The following choices are effective annual rates. Assume that the cash flows shown in the table are paid all at once at the given point in time.

(a) 0.2500

(b) 0.2000

(c) 0.1180

(d) 0.1000

(e) 0.1056

Question 298  interest only loan

A prospective home buyer can afford to pay $2,000 per month in mortgage loan repayments. The central bank recently lowered its policy rate by 0.25%, and residential home lenders cut their mortgage loan rates from 4.74% to 4.49%.

How much more can the prospective home buyer borrow now that interest rates are 4.49% rather than 4.74%? Give your answer as a proportional increase over the original amount he could borrow (##V_\text{before}##), so:

###\text{Proportional increase} = \frac{V_\text{after}-V_\text{before}}{V_\text{before}} ###

Assume that:

• Interest rates are expected to be constant over the life of the loan.

• Loans are interest-only and have a life of 30 years.

• Mortgage loan payments are made every month in arrears and all interest rates are given as annualised percentage rates compounding per month.

(a) 0.055679

(b) 0.029631

(c) 0.029547

(d) 0.006245

(e) 0.0025

Question 379  leverage, capital structure, payout policy

Companies must pay interest and principal payments to debt-holders. They're compulsory. But companies are not forced to pay dividends to share holders. or ?

Question 522  income and capital returns, real and nominal returns and cash flows, inflation, real estate

A residential investment property has an expected nominal total return of 6% pa and nominal capital return of 2.5% pa. Inflation is expected to be 2.5% pa.

All of the above are effective nominal rates and investors believe that they will stay the same in perpetuity.

What are the property's expected real total, capital and income returns?

The answer choices below are given in the same order.

(a) 3.4146%,   3.4146%,   0%.

(b) 3.4146%,   0.4878%,   0.4878%.

(c) 3.4146%,   0%,   3.4146%.

(d) 0.9878%,   0.5%,   0.4878%.

(e) 0.9756%,   0.4878%,   0.4878%.

Question 793  option, hedging, delta hedging, gamma hedging, gamma, Black-Scholes-Merton option pricing

A bank buys 1000 European put options on a $10 non-dividend paying stock at a strike of $12. The bank wishes to hedge this exposure. The bank can trade the underlying stocks and European call options with a strike price of 7 on the same stock with the same maturity. Details of the call and put options are given in the table below. Each call and put option is on a single stock.

European Options on a Non-dividend Paying Stock
Description	Symbol	Put Values	Call Values
Spot price ($)	##S_0##	10	10
Strike price ($)	##K_T##	12	7
Risk free cont. comp. rate (pa)	##r##	0.05	0.05
Standard deviation of the stock's cont. comp. returns (pa)	##\sigma##	0.4	0.4
Option maturity (years)	##T##	1	1
Option price ($)	##p_0## or ##c_0##	2.495350486	3.601466138
##N[d_1]##	##\partial c/\partial S##		0.888138405
##N[d_2]##	##N[d_2]##		0.792946442
##-N[-d_1]##	##\partial p/\partial S##	-0.552034778
##N[-d_2]##	##N[-d_2]##	0.207053558
Gamma	##\Gamma = \partial^2 c/\partial S^2## or ##\partial^2 p/\partial S^2##	0.098885989	0.047577422
Theta	##\Theta = \partial c/\partial T## or ##\partial p/\partial T##	0.348152078	0.672379961

 

Which of the following statements is NOT correct?

(a) If the underlying stock price suddenly rose by $0.01, the put option price would be expected to fall by less than $0.00552034777953178.

(b) If the underlying stock price suddenly fell by $0.01, the put option price would be expected to rise by more than $0.00552034777953178.

(c) If the underlying stock price suddenly rose by $0.01, the call option price would be expected to rise by more than $0.00888138404936379.

(d) To Delta hedge the 1000 long put options, long 552.0348 stocks.

(e) To Delta and Gamma hedge the 1000 long put options, long 2078.4226 call options and short 2397.9617 stocks.

Question 805  short selling

Short selling is a way to make money from falling prices. In what order must the following steps be completed to short-sell an asset? Let Tom, Dick and Harry be traders in the share market.

• Step P: Purchase the asset from Harry.
• Step G: Give the asset to Tom.
• Step W: Wait and hope that the asset price falls.
• Step B: Borrow the asset from Tom.
• Step S: Sell the asset to Dick.

Select the statement with the correct order of steps.

(a) P, G, W, B, S.

(b) B, G, W, P, S.

(c) B, W, G, P, S.

(d) P, W, S, B, G.

(e) B, S, W, P, G.

Question 862  yield curve, bond pricing, bill pricing, monetary policy, no explanation

Refer to the below graph when answering the questions.

Which of the following statements is NOT correct?

(a) The 3-month government bill yield is likely to be given as a simple interest rate.

(b) The 10-year government bond yield is likely to be given as an annualised percentage rate compounding every six months since Japanese government bonds pay semi-annual coupons.

(c) As 10-year government bond yields fell over the last few years, bond investors would have made capital gains assuming that the bonds are fixed-coupon.

(d) The Japanese yield curve is ‘inverse’ at the latest time in mid-2017.

(e) The Japanese central bank has been maintaining expansionary monetary policy over the last few years.

Question 904  option, Black-Scholes-Merton option pricing, option on future on stock index

A six month European-style call option on six month S&P500 index futures has a strike price of 2800 points.

The six month futures price on the S&P500 index is currently at 2740.805274 points. The futures underlie the call option.

The S&P500 stock index currently trades at 2700 points. The stock index underlies the futures. The stock index's standard deviation of continuously compounded returns is 25% pa.

The risk-free interest rate is 5% pa continuously compounded.

Use the Black-Scholes-Merton formula to calculate the option price. The call option price now is:

(a) 226.43 points

(b) 220.56 points

(c) 176.21 points

(d) 162.83 points

(e) 128.92 points