Comparing The Individual Holdings Of My 10 Stocks With The Portfolio As A Whole Essay

Portfolio management is an important factor that determines the performance of the portfolio. To perform well in the portfolio, it is not only essential to develop personal investment strategies, but analyzing current financial trend is also vital. Stock Trak is an online portfolio simulation that allows students to try out different investment strategies, and also get a hand on experience in what the real market trading conditions are. By managing the portfolio, I have acquired some new knowledge of investment strategies and also become more familiar with the current market by following closely to the financial headlines.

Choosing two profitable stocks amongst a myriad of potential alternatives is a daunting task to say the least. In order to narrow my choices from thousands to two, I examined several aspects of companies I was interested in. Among these were, company overview, alpha and beta ratings, price ratios, price charts, and company headlines. After evaluating this information, I chose Intuit INC (INTU) listed on the NASDAQ and Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) listed on the NYSE.

Although this investment class can be considered the most conservative of the three, the low yield of government bonds in the past 10 years does not lend a comparative metric against many other investment opportunities (Jacobs, 2012). The fixed rate of these instruments allows for a guaranteed return, but should only be utilized at a point in an investing cycle when risk is higher than potential income growth. The 25% allocation that is invested in this class is positioned to provide a long term guaranteed investment, with the possible that these lower rates will not rise significantly in the next few years.

Fund flows are positively related to past performance, and better performing partnerships are more likely to raise follow-on funds and larger funds. Figure 1 aggregates the historical returns of Exhibition 1 and compares them to the fund sizes of Accel since 1983 vintage. The graph shows that there is a positive correlation between the historical returns of both the average and upper quartile with the fund size of Accel. However, it can be seen that as returns for top performers and average VC funds decline after 1996, Accel was still able to increase its fund size by 83%. Accel continued ability to raise larger funds implies not only the success of the company’s past strategic performance but also the existing high demand for investing with Accel. Hence, it would be justified that for the latest VC fund Accel has proposed to charge a carried interest of 30% rather than 20%. Our analysis then looks into this latest VC fund, Accel Partners VII, and forecasts the NPV and IRR of the investment under specific standard assumptions. Table 2 shows a part of our NPV and IRR calculations under different steady growth rate. It should be noted that for investors to be indifferent between investing in a typical 20/80 VC fund versus the 30/70 Accel VII fund, Accel must outperform the average in every NPV and IRR

“The Benefits of diversification are clear. Portfolio theory has played a crucial role in explaining the relationship between risk and return where more than one investment is held. It also enables us to identify optimal and efficient portfolios.”

Diversification is a basic principle in investing the idea being that since you cannot possibly know beforehand which stocks will perform better or worse than the average, you cannot afford to put all of your money into one company, or even in companies within a single industry. One resorts to diversification to spread the risk -- and opportunity. The average returns are obtained by diversifying.

xxv. Low total asset turnover (not bad but when compared to average they are low)

As of November 17, 2017, we had a negative return of 7.46%, whereas the benchmark index generated a return of 3.48%, meaning that we underperformed the benchmark by 10.94%. The decrease in market value of common stock holdings accounted for approximately 3.46% of the total loss, and losses from futures contracts accounted for approximately 4%. The standard deviation of our portfolio was 3.41%. Our portfolio had a shape ratio of -2.35%, and the information ratio was computed to be -9.6%.

A. With the purpose of diversifying his portfolio, Javier should focus his investing toward other companies and sectors outside of Devon Energy Corp. Nearly 21% of his entire portfolio is invested in one company. The purpose of diversification is to help secure a portfolio from risk and loss. Having such a large chunk of his portfolio tied up in one company puts a large percentage of his portfolio in the hands of one company. If something were to happen and the shares dropped drastically Javier would experience a huge loss. Javier should stick with the idea of owning dividend stocks but should transfer some of his investments into other companies in other sectors. This will create some security and protect him from

(2) How does the riskiness of this two-stock portfolio compare with the riskiness of the individual stocks if they were held in isolation?

When combining the figures for ROE, ROA and the DuPont analysis it appears that the company is using leverage favourably. ROE is greater than ROA and assets are greater than equity. This is a positive sign for shareholders as it suggests a good investment return in a company that is managing its shareholder equity well (Evans & McDowell, 2009).

Return on Assets (ROA) of 8.74% and Return on Equity (ROE) of 12.4% are both positive.

Tracking error is a measure of how closely a portfolio follows the index to which it is benchmarked. The most common measure is the root-mean-square of the difference between the portfolio and index returns.

From September 3rd, 2015 to October 28th, 2015, our group was given the opportunity to manage an investment portfolio, with the goal of maximizing the value of the portfolio through acquiring, holding, and selling stock. The beginning cash balance of the portfolio was $100,000, and our group had the ability to make up to 500 trades. During this time period, our group made 20 stock purchases and sold stock twice. At the close of business on October 28, 2015, the value of our group’s portfolio increased from $100,000 to $106,785.33, yielding a return of  6.78% (((106785.33/100,000)-1) x 100)). In comparison to the S&P 500 returned at 7.16% and the Dow Jones having a return of 8.65% (Yahoo).

Diversification is a method of investing that been shown to increase portfolio return while reducing portfolio risk as measured by standard deviation. This method specifically increases the efficient frontier for investors. The challenge to an investing firm is an appetite by its customers for an ever increasing efficient frontier. One area to explore to obtain this increase is through further diversifying through international diversification.