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Capital Asset Pricing Model and Arbitrage Pricing Theory Essay examples

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A Chartered Financial Analyst, Jeffrey Bruner, uses the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) to help identify mispriced securities. However, a consultant suggests Bruner to use Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) instead. As the following, it will mention the role of CAPM in the modern portfolio management; to clarify the APT faction and explain the reasons why should Bruner use APT to help identify mispriced securities. In modern portfolio management, the role of Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is a model that attempts to describe the relationship between the risk and the expected return on an investment and that is used in the pricing of risky securities. The assumption behind the CAPM is that there is only one risk-free rate in the …show more content…

Using a separate pricing model, like the dividend discount model, we can estimate the value of a security and compare it to the SML and identify any mispricing. Firstly, calculate the required rate of using CAPM. Then, determine the market-implied expected rate of return using an alternative methodology such as the dividend discount model. After that, compare the two returns and if (1) market-implied expected return is larger than CAPM required return, the security is undervalued; (2)market-implied expected return is equal to CAPM required return, the security is correctly valued; (3) CAPM required return is larger than market-implied expected return, the security is overvalued.
Additionally, the CAPM has several advantages over other methods of calculating required return; it considers only systematic risk, reflecting a reality in which most investors have diversified portfolios from which unsystematic risk has been essentially eliminated. It generates a theoretically-derived relationship between required return and frequent empirical research and testing . This model is built on modern portfolio theory which is simple and sensible. However, CAPM is difficult to find good proxy for market returns; it is unlikely risk premium and betas on individual assets are stationary over time, also estimating beta by using past data may not reveal current beta.
The Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) is motivated by the empirical failure of the

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