A firm changes its capital structure by issuing a large amount of debt and using the funds to repurchase shares. Its assets are unchanged. Ignore interest tax shields.
According to the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), which statement is correct?
A fairly priced stock has an expected return of 15% pa. Treasury bonds yield 5% pa and the market portfolio's expected return is 10% pa. What is the beta of the stock?
You operate a cattle farm that supplies hamburger meat to the big fast food chains. You buy a lot of grain to feed your cattle, and you sell the fully grown cattle on the livestock market.
You're afraid of adverse movements in grain and livestock prices. What options should you buy to hedge your exposures in the grain and cattle livestock markets?
Select the most correct response:
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.
Question 558 portfolio weights, portfolio return, short selling
An investor wants to make a portfolio of two stocks A and B with a target expected portfolio return of 16% pa.
- Stock A has an expected return of 8% pa.
- Stock B has an expected return of 12% pa.
What portfolio weights should the investor have in stocks A and B respectively?
Question 719 mean and median returns, return distribution, arithmetic and geometric averages, continuously compounding rate
A stock has an arithmetic average continuously compounded return (AALGDR) of 10% pa, a standard deviation of continuously compounded returns (SDLGDR) of 80% pa and current stock price of $1. Assume that stock prices are log-normally distributed. The graph below summarises this information and provides some helpful formulas.
In one year, what do you expect the median and mean prices to be? The answer options are given in the same order.
Question 786 fixed for floating interest rate swap, intermediated swap
The below table summarises the borrowing costs confronting two companies A and B.
Bond Market Yields | ||||
Fixed Yield to Maturity (%pa) | Floating Yield (%pa) | |||
Firm A | 3 | L - 0.4 | ||
Firm B | 5 | L + 1 | ||
Firm A wishes to borrow at a floating rate and Firm B wishes to borrow at a fixed rate. Design an intermediated swap (which means there will actually be two swaps) that nets a bank 0.1% and shares the remaining swap benefits between Firms A and B equally. Which of the following statements about the swap is NOT correct?
Question 792 mean and median returns, return distribution, arithmetic and geometric averages, continuously compounding rate, log-normal distribution, confidence interval
A risk manager has identified that their investment fund’s continuously compounded portfolio returns are normally distributed with a mean of 10% pa and a standard deviation of 40% pa. The fund’s portfolio is currently valued at $1 million. Assume that there is no estimation error in the above figures. To simplify your calculations, all answers below use 2.33 as an approximation for the normal inverse cumulative density function at 99%. All answers are rounded to the nearest dollar. Assume one month is 1/12 of a year. Which of the following statements is NOT correct?