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).
Arbitrage, could be defined as a guaranteed trading opportunity without risk to make a profit. In the case that an asset is in situation of under-valuated, will swiftly draw the attention of rational investors that would take advantage of this by buying the asset at a bargain price in large amount pushing the price to its fundamental value so the expected return is relatively higher than the risk involved (Barberis and Thaler, 2002 and Ritter, 2003). On the other hand, if an asset is over-valuated, rational investors would sell in short , in order to take advantage of the correct...
... middle of paper ...
...e intrinsic value of a portfolio of some Internet stocks was half of the market value in the late 1990’s. Therefore, if the finance analysts’ outcome were right, these huge technology companies were worth only 50 per cent of their current prices. Then this could have been prevented by institutional investors taking short position on the internet stock. But despite they did so, it had little effect, because the majority of the market participants are individual investors that are overwhelm by good moment, putting more buying pressure on this title, driving up the prices (Thaler, 1999, pp 15). Hence, this is does not make any sense according to rational equilibrium, since the US internet stock market heeded more to the peoples’ emotions rather than the fundamentals so investor are not completely rational because their behaviour also account for the market operation.
Before we invested, we decided to pick two types of companies to invest in. We would choose companies that had expensive stock but steady increasing prices and we would choose smaller companies that had cheaper stock but whom had a chance for potential huge price increases. If the smaller companies’ stock went down the bigger companies’ steadily increasing stock would even it out, but if the smaller companies’ stock price rose greatly, like we predict, we could sell and make a good profit. We found a big name company that had reliable stock prices pretty quick, but finding a small company whose stock price could rise was hard. We
According to Clarke and Cornish (2001, p. 34), “the rational choice perspective was explicitly developed to assist policy thinking … specifically through detailed modeling of criminal decision making. The theory theorizes that offenders who have chosen to commit criminal acts, do so because of the reward it brings to them. Coupled with the different conditions that are needed for specific crimes to occur, with its emphasizes on the role of crime opportunities in causation.
The objective of this paper is to provide insight into Rational Choice Theory. This theory, highly relied upon by many disciplines, is also used to calculate and determine crime and criminal behavior. Through definition, example and techniques utilized by criminologists, the reader will have a better understanding of the subject.
When discussing the cost of equity capital, or the rate of return required by investors for their share expenses, there are three main models widely used for analyzation. These models are the dividend growth model, which operates on the variable of growth and future trends, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), which operates on the premise that higher returns are a result of higher risk, and the arbitrage pricing theory (APT), which has a more flexible set of criteria than CAPM and takes advantage of mispriced securities
In the first place, a main theoretical cornerstone for the EMH to be a consequence of equilibrium in capital markets is that markets are always rational. This is against the realism. Even if the foregoing assumption turn out to be entirely possible, many recent studies have concluded that rationality is not always a realistic assumption as investors in many cases engage in irrational investment (Kahneman and Riepe, (1998)).
Rational choice theory, also known simply as choice theory, is the assessment of a potential offender to commit a crime. Choice theory is the belief that committing a crime is a rational decision, based on cost benefit analysis. The would-be offender will weigh the costs of committing a particular crime: fines, jail time, and imprisonment versus the benefits: money, status, heightened adrenaline. Depending on which factors out-weigh the other, a criminal will decide to commit or forgo committing a crime. This decision making process makes committing a crime a rational choice. This theory can be used to explain why an offender will decide to commit burglary, robbery, aggravated assault, or murder.
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).
Market efficiency signifies how “quickly and accurately” does relevant information have its effect on the asset prices. Depending upon the degree of efficiency of a market or a sector thereof, the return earned by an investor will vary from the normal return.
There are many risks that people take in their lives. Yet, investing in the stock market is one of the riskiest things to do. All the money that has been saved over years, possibly saved over a lifetime, could all be lost in the blink of an eye. The Great Depression was triggered by the most well-known stock market crash in history, another crash happened in 1987, and one could happen any moment. However, people invest to make money and through this simulation strategies and a basic understanding were compiled to get a perspective on the risk and tasks involved in investing.
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.
The efficient market hypothesis has been one of the main topics of academic finance research. The efficient market hypotheses also know as the joint hypothesis problem, asserts that financial markets lack solid hard information in making decisions. Efficient market hypothesis claims it is impossible to beat the market because stock market efficiency causes existing share prices to always incorporate and reflect all relevant information . According to efficient market hypothesis stocks always trade at their fair value on stock exchanges, making it impossible for investors to either purchase undervalued stocks or sell stocks for inflated prices. As such, it should be impossible to outperform the overall market through expert stock selection or market timing, and that the only way an investor can possibly obtain higher returns is by purchasing riskier investments . In reality once cannot always achieve returns in excess of average market return on a risk-adjusted basis. They have been numerous arguments against the efficient market hypothesis. Some researches point out the fact financial theories are subjective, in other words they are ideas that try to explain how markets work and behave.
Technology is an important factor in investing activities. For example, stock trading is computer-based and can automatically execute the trading of large volumes of shares. This has become an extremely frequent activity on stock exchanges in our advanced world. Artificial intelligence is allowing humans to have a “cutting edge” by using computers when investing.
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.
Rational in decision making is the method which means making the decisions according to the accurate reasons and facts. In the rational decision making process, the manager will come out a lot of analysis on those relevant facts and reasons before choosing the best ones of action. Through this rational in decision making, the manager can make the decision based on the correct information without following their intuition. There had some importance of rationality in decision making (Business Dictionary, 2017).
In the modern world, financial markets play a significant role, with huge volumes of everyday dealings. They form part of contemporary economic lifestyle and determine the level of success of many people. Humans have always been uncertain of what the future holds and thus, tried to forecast it. The forecast of course cannot omit the likelihood of “easy money” by forecasting the prices of equity markets in the future.