Financial Theories and Strategies
Introduction
Financial theories are the building blocks of today's corporate world. "The basic building blocks of finance theory lay the foundation for many modern tools used in areas such asset pricing and investment. Many of these theoretical concepts such as general equilibrium analysis, information economics and theory of contracts are firmly rooted in classical Microeconomics" (Oaktree, 2005)
This paper will define and discuss five financial theories and how they impact business decisions made by financial managers. The theories will be the Modern Portfolio Theory, Tobin Separation Theorem, Equilibrium Theory, Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT), and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis.
Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT)
The Modern portfolio theory {MPT}, "proposes how rational investors will use diversification to optimize their portfolios, and how an asset should be priced given its risk relative to the market as a whole. The basic concepts of the theory are the efficient frontier, Capital Asset Pricing Model and beta coefficient, the Capital Market Line and the Securities Market Line. MPT models the return of an asset as a random variable and a portfolio as a weighted combination of assets; the return of a portfolio is thus also a random variable and consequently has an expected value and a variance.
Risk in this model is identified with the standard deviation of portfolio return. Rationality is modeled by supposing that an investor choosing between several portfolios with identical expected returns will prefer that portfolio which minimizes risk." (Wikipedia, 2005) Figure 1 and Figure 2 are examples on how this theory can be illustrated on a graph.
Using the Modern Portfolio Theory, overtime risk assets will provide a higher expected rate of return, as compensation to the investors for accepting a high risk. The high risk will eventually lower collecting asset classes to the portfolio, thus reducing the volatile risk, and increasing the expected rates of return. Furthermore the purpose of this theory is to develop the most optimal investments portfolio which would yield the highest rate of return while ascertaining the risk for the individual or corporate investor. This theory impacts global and domestic financial managers by basing their portfolio using capital market line, capital asset pricing, and securities as a foundation for investments. When used, the MPT establishes investment portfolios, which are used by companies such as Fidelity or Scott Trade for both long-term and short-term strategies.
Fig 1 Fig 2
Tobin Separation Theorem
"James Tobin ...
Dimensional's value strategies are based on the Fama/French research in multifactor portfolios designed to capture the return premiums associated with high book-to-market (BtM) ratios.
Brealey, Richard A., and Myers, Stewart C. Principles of Corporate Finance. Sixth ed. McGraw Hill, New York, © 2000.
...r investments that can support the other weight and balance their portfolio and therefore alleviate some of the risk they face.
The CAPM first began in 1952 by Harry Markowitz and his paper rigorously described the aspect of portfolio risks. A portfolio risk is when a stockholder or an investor invests in so many assets so that the rate of a risky turnover is spread amongst the assets to reduce the percentage of loss returned on the assets. For example, Mr. A buys 10 different assets from different companies so that if asset A from Alek corporations fail, Mr. A can still get returns from the 9 other assets, hence his risk and loss has been shared amongst his invested assets.
Considering the importance of this, Yale’s investment Committee reviewed its portfolio at least once a year. In order to decide the target allocation, the organization performed a mean-variance analysis of the expected returns and risks and compared them with those of past Yale allocations and the current mean allocation of other universities. Moreover, the organization also examined the long-run implications of its allocation for the downside risk to the
What do you understand by the phrase “stakeholder analysis”? Attempt a stakeholder analysis of an organisation that you are closely associated with.
The efficient market, as one of the pillars of neoclassical finance, asserts that financial markets are efficient on information. The efficient market hypothesis suggests that there is no trading system based on currently available information that could be expected to generate excess risk-adjusted returns consistently as this information is already reflected in current prices. However, EMH has been the most controversial subject of research in the fields of financial economics during the last 40 years. “Behavioural finance, however, is now seriously challenging this premise by arguing that people are clearly not rational” (Ross, (2002)). Behavioral finance uses facts from psychology and other human sciences in order to explain human investors’ behaviors.
This assignment is concerned with your understanding of the key issues relative to portfolio analysis and investment. In completing this assignment you are to limit your scope to the US stock markets only. Use the Cybrary, the Internet, and course resources to write a 2-page essay which you will use with new clients of your financial planning business which addresses the following issues and/or practices:
The economic rationality assumption has given an important connation for the market efficiency, as it has been the base to carry out the construction of the modern knowledge in standard finance. Resulting in the development of the most important insights in finance, such as arbitrage pricing theory of Miller and Modigliani, the Markowitz portfolio optimization, the capital asset pricing theory of Sharp, Lintner and Sharp and the option-pricing model of Black, Scholes and Merton (Pompian, 2006 and Lo, 2005). At this stage, these advances provide a sophisticated mathematical approach to explain what happen in real life. As a result, of these advances, individuals who trade stocks and bonds use these theories under the assumption that the assets they are investing in have similar value to the prices they are paying. This way, according to the market efficiency, current prices reflect all relevant information so trading stocks in an attempt to exceed the benchmark or to produce returns above average will not be possible without taking risk above the average since with arbitrage would make go back prices to their real or fundamental value (Malkiel, 2003).
To maximize optimum performance of our investment portfolio, we placed a certain percentage of equity in different sectors of the stock market.
Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is an ex ante concept, which is built on the portfolio theory established by Markowitz (Bhatnagar and Ramlogan 2012). It enhances the understanding of elements of asset prices, specifically the linear relationship between risk and expected return (Perold 2004). The direct correlation between risk and return is well defined by the security market line (SML), where market risk of an asset is associated with the return and risk of the market along with the risk free rate to estimate expected return on an asset (Watson and Head 1998 cited in Laubscher 2002).
According to Investopedia (Asset Allocation Definition, 2013), asset allocation is an investment strategy that aims to balance risk and reward by distributing a portfolio’s assets according to an individual’s goals, risk tolerance and investment horizon. There are three main asset classes: equities, fixed-income, cash and cash equivalents; but they all have different levels of risk and return. A prudent investor should be careful in allocating each asset class to his portfolio. Proper asset allocation is a highly debatable subject and is not designed equally for everybody, but is rather based on the desires and needs of the individual investor. This paper discusses the importance of asset allocation, the differences and the proper diversification within the portfolio.
Our understanding and the concept of investment in behavioural finance combines economics and psychology to analyse how and why investors make final decision. As an investor one’s decision to invest is fully influence by different type of attitudes of behavioural and psychological ( Ricciardi & Simon, 2000). Yet, in order to maximize their financial goal, investors must have a good investment planning. Furthermore , to gain a good investment planning , there must be a good decision making among investors. They have to choose the right investment plan I order to manage the resources for different type of investments not only to gain profit wise but also to avoid the risk that occur from investment.
This paper will discuss the role of the financial manager and how that particular role, in the area of corporate expertise, differs from that of the shareholder and of the employee. The discussion the paper provides will help determine how the financial manager maximizes shareholder value in today's financial market. Lastly, the viewpoint of the financial manager will be compared to that of the shareholder and employee.
Block, S. B., & Hirt, G. A. (2005). Foundations of financial management. (11th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.