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Tutorial Session 5
1. Which of the following statements is true for a stock that sells now for $60, pays an annual
dividend of $4.00, and experienced a 20% return on investment over the past year? Its price
one year ago was:
D. $53.33.
2. What is the percentage return on a stock that was purchased for $50.00, paid a $3.00
dividend after one year, and was then sold for $49.00?
C. 4.00%
4. In a year in which common stocks offered an average return of 18%, Treasury bonds offered
10% and Treasury bills offered 7%, the risk premium for common stocks was:
D. 11%.
5. What is the approximate variance of returns if over the past 3 years an investment returned
8.0%, -12.0%, and 15.0%?
B. 131
6. Unique or diversifiable risks apply specifically the firm in question—for example,
risk due to changing input prices or changing demand or renegotiation of labor
contracts, and so on. While these (and numerous other) examples of unique risk
can dramatically affect returns on the firm's stock, these types of risk can be
diversified away by combining stocks that do not move in lock-step fashion into a
portfolio. Then, for example, the increase in steel prices is balanced with a
decrease in wheat prices to even out the ups and downs of investing in individual
stocks. Although few stocks move in perfect harmony, most move in the same
direction, or are said to be positively correlated. It can be especially beneficial for
risk reduction to add to the portfolio those few stocks that are expected to have a
negative correlation. While most diversification is risk-reducing, adding
negatively correlated stocks can have the largest amount of risk reduction. On the
other hand, market risks are felt by all firms (although not necessarily to the same
extent) and thus cannot be diversified away. Examples of these systematic, or
macro, risks would be interest rates, business cycles, exchange rates, and so forth.
Adding securities to a portfolio will mitigate the unique risk, and total risk will
thus approach the level of market risk after 15 or 20 securities are combined.
Beyond that degree of diversification, few benefits in the form of risk reduction
are actually received.
9. a) The CAPM implies that the expected rate of return that investors will demand of the
portfolio is:
r = rf + (rm - rf) = 5% + 0.8 (15% - 5%) = 13%
If the portfolio is expected to provide only a 12% rate of return, it is an unattractive
investment. The portfolio does not provide an expected return that is sufficiently high
relative to its risk.