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Risk analysis in investment decisions
The fundamentals of portfolio management
Risk analysis in investment decisions
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Dr. Harry Markowitz was the establisher of Portfolio selection, he won a share of the 1990 Nobel Prize for his research of "Financial Economics". Dr. Harry Markowitz invested the Portfolio selection and released it in 1959, which was the fundamental stage of Modern Portfolio Theory. According to Dr. Harry Markowitz and his Portfolio selection the process of selecting a portfolio can be divided to two levels. The first level begins with the investigation and proof of the future progress of available assets. The second level begins with the relative believes for the future progress of the available assets and ends by choosing the portfolio. In order to choose the portfolio there are rules an investor have to follow. One of the rules is the one that the investor would have the maximum future expected gains of his capitalized asset value.
Portfolio Theory can be used by economic agents who act under uncertain situations. That flow from the fact that in real market world there is nothing certain. One verified example is in manufacturing environment where there is gab of time between the producing decision, the production process and the sale of the product, which bring us to the conclusion that sale price is uncertain in the beginning of the process. Institutional investors can use this theory.
Portfolio Theory has six basic principles according to Dr. Harry Markowitz. The first one state that investors are not willing to have risk on their portfolio and the only risk they accept is the one that balance with their returns. The second principle states that market prices are satisfied and logical. The third principle states that the portfolio must be distributed as a whole security selection. The forth principle states that ...
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...n began with the right strategy. Some managers have more valid information than others. If managers follow the correct strategy the investments would have the right performance. Modern portfolio theory was not the reason of the recession on 2008 – 2009. The reason of the recession was the bad manage of Modern portfolio theory from managers.
Works Cited
http://www.simonemariotti.com/downloads/Papers%20finanziari/Fabozzi-Gupta-Mar.pdf
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~eelton/papers/97-dec.pdf
http://www.e-m-h.org/Mark91.pdf
http://www.isectors.com/pdf/article_Principals%20of%20Modern%20Portfolio%20Theory%20Continue%20to%20Inspire.pdf
http://www.iiis.org/CDs2010/CD2010IMC/ICEME_2010/PapersPdf/FB583RP.pdf
http://www.onwallstreet.com/ows_issues/2010_5/in-defense-of-modern-portfolio-theory-2666592-1.html
http://monevator.com/2009/02/26/portfolio-diversification/
However prior to 2008, nearly everyone was blind to their impending doom; investors, bankers, government regulators, the general population, and even the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, a man who was considered the economic guru, was fooled into believing the prosperity America had been enjoying would last for the foreseeable future (“Rethinking” 20). By this time there had been only mild economic downturns or, at most, short periods of turmoil. Financial institutions and large corporations had grown accustomed to the decades of economic prosperity resulting from the post-war economic boom, long forgetting the lessons learned from the Great Depression (“Rethinking” 20). In fact, economists concluded that America had entered a new era of calm. After a generation of portfolio managers and investors profiting from decades of favorable returns on stocks they believed the modern economy was impervious to major calamities (“Rethinking” 20). As inflation rates fell from record highs in the late 1970s and early 1980s to the record lows that they are today, interest rates followed enabling Americans to borrow more money from
Not only were millions of Americans been put out of work due to these manager’s actions, the American financial markets themselves were pushed to the brink of collapse. Despite the fact that the global financial markets, in reality, are not perfectly efficient, there is a corrective mechanism built into the day-to-day trading in the market. When prices are driven down by large sells, either by large investors or a movement in a stock, there are usually new buyers for these stocks at the cheaper price. Managers of...
It is often said that perception outweighs reality and that is often the view of the stock market. News that a certain stock may be on the rise can set off a buying spree, while a tip that one may be on decline might entice people to sell. The fact that no one really knows what is going to happen one way or the other is inconsequential. John Kenneth Galbraith uses the concept of speculation as a major theme in his book The Great Crash 1929. Galbraith’s portrayal of the market before the crash focuses largely on massive speculation of overvalued stocks which were inevitably going to topple and take the wealth of the shareholders down with it. After all, the prices could not continue to go up forever. Widespread speculation was no doubt a major player in the crash, but many other factors were in play as well. While the speculation argument has some merit, the reasons for the collapse and its lasting effects had many moving parts that cannot be explained so simply.
The United States signaled a new era after the end of World War I. It was an era of hopefulness when many people invested their money that was under the mattresses at home or in the bank into the stock market. People migrated to the prosperous cities with the hopes of finding much better life. In the 1920s, the stock market reputation did not appear to be a risky investment, until 1929.First noticeable in 1925, the stock market prices began to rise as more people invested their money. During 1925 and 1926, the stock prices vacillated but in 1927, it had an upward trend. The stock market boom had started by 1928. The stock market was no longer a long-term investment because the boom changed the investor’s way of thinking (“The Stock Market Crash of 1929”). The Stock Market Crash of 1929 was a mass hysteria because of people investing without any prior knowledge and the after effects that eventually led to the Great Depression.
Warren Buffet once said, “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago” (Buffett, Cunningham 51). During the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in history, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors, the Great Depression, Warren Buffet was buying and selling his first stocks. Amid the difficult times, Warren Buffett became one of the greatest investors ever and is regularly ranked among the wealthiest people in the world with a net-worth of 66.7 billion dollars (“History”).
Market Risk is also known as Systematic Risk due to its broad impact on investments. The level of Market Risk depends on the probability that the entire market will decline and drag down the values of all companies. With Market Risk, investors stand to lose value irrespective of the companies, business sectors, or investment vehicles they are invested in. It can be difficult for investors to protect themselves against market risk, since investment strategies, like diversification, is mostly ineffective (Investopedia,
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 MDA model also showed potential to ease some problems in the selection of securities for a portfolio, but further investigation was recommended.
To maximize optimum performance of our investment portfolio, we placed a certain percentage of equity in different sectors of the stock market.
From my perspective, the usefulness of CAPM is directed towards efficient investment decision making and strategic management. Moosa (2013) remarks CAPM to be a supportive model in ‘evaluating the performance of managed portfolios and for investment purposes’.
Shortly after the financial crisis in 2008, many economists had to rethink their approach to the market. Everyone knew we had a panic because the stock market and the housing market collapsed. American economy was reaching to the bottom. Many people considered it as a second worst recession after the great the Great Depression. But what was the cause? Who were responsible for the crisis? What can we learn from this turmoil? In the recent New York Times Sunday magazine article, Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman offered his explanation for the causes and insight toward fixing the economy.
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.
There is a sense of complexity today that has led many to believe the individual investor has little chance of competing with professional brokers and investment firms. However, Malkiel states this is a major misconception as he explains in his book “A Random Walk Down Wall Street”. What does a random walk mean? The random walk means in terms of the stock market that, “short term changes in stock prices cannot be predicted”. So how does a rational investor determine which stocks to purchase to maximize returns? Chapter 1 begins by defining and determining the difference in investing and speculating. Investing defined by Malkiel is the method of “purchasing assets to gain profit in the form of reasonably predictable income or appreciation over the long term”. Speculating in a sense is predicting, but without sufficient data to support any kind of conclusion. What is investing? Investing in its simplest form is the expectation to receive greater value in the future than you have today by saving income rather than spending. For example a savings account will earn a particular interest rate as will a corporate bond. Investment returns therefore depend on the allocation of funds and future events. Traditionally there have been two approaches used by the investment community to determine asset valuation: “the firm-foundation theory” and the “castle in the air theory”. The firm foundation theory argues that each investment instrument has something called intrinsic value, which can be determined analyzing securities present conditions and future growth. The basis of this theory is to buy securities when they are temporarily undervalued and sell them when they are temporarily overvalued in comparison to there intrinsic value One of the main variables used in this theory is dividend income. A stocks intrinsic value is said to be “equal to the present value of all its future dividends”. This is done using a method called discounting. Another variable to consider is the growth rate of the dividends. The greater the growth rate the more valuable the stock. However it is difficult to determine how long growth rates will last. Other factors are risk and interest rates, which will be discussed later. Warren Buffet, the great investor of our time, used this technique in making his fortune.
Financial crises have influenced the os of financial markets in past. The most important the Great Depression in 1929-30, the 1970s inflation failures and the banking difficulties in the 1990s led to problems in the financial markets causing serious disturbance. The recent financial crisis which became known in 2007, though the roots were implanted much earlier, has been the worst situation financial markets have ever faced.
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.