Peachtree Securities Case Summary

Advisors and investors would do well to pay as much attention to the expected volatility of any portfolio or investment as they do to anticipated returns. Moreover, all things being equal, a new investment should only be added to a portfolio when it either reduces the expected risk for a targeted level of returns, or when it boosts expected portfolio returns without adding additional risk, as measured by the expected standard deviation of those returns. Lesson 2: Don’t assume bonds or international stocks offer adequate portfolio diversification. As the world’s financial markets become more closely correlated, bonds and foreign stocks may not provide adequate portfolio diversification. Instead, advisors may want to recommend that suitable investors add modest exposure to nontraditional investments such as hedge funds, private equity and real assets. Such exposure may bolster portfolio returns, while reducing overall risk, depending on how it is structured. Lesson 3: Be disciplined in adhering to asset allocation targets. The long-term benefits of portfolio diversification will only be realized if investors are disciplined in adhering to asset allocation guidelines. For this reason, it is recommended that advisors regularly revisit portfolio allocations and rebalance

Markowitz contribution showed that the benefits of diversification depend not just on risking individual assets but also on how the asset returns interact with each other, or the correlation between returns.

The case involving Birch & Davis International, Inc., and Warren M. Christopher, the United States Secretary of State was decided on September 13th, 1993. The case involved procurement procedures conducted by the Agency of International Development (Open Jurist). The issue centered on exclusion of bids made by Birch & Davis International, Inc. Birch challenged the exclusion to the General Services Administration Board of Contract Appeals and they decided that the actions taken by the agency were fair. The case got to the Federal level when Birch appealed the decision by the board.

6. Do bonds reduce the overall risk of an investment portfolio? Let x be a random variable representing annual percent return for the Vanguard Total Stock Index (all Stocks). Let y be a random variable representing annual return for the Vanguard Balanced Index (60% stock and 40% bond). For the past several years, assume the following data. Compute .

Chuck Whitman is a degree holder in finance from DePaul University. Before the establishment of ICM, he worked as a portfolio executive for quite a few wealth management companies with the main objective of gaining as much awareness and experience about the industry and its operational techniques as possible. This enthusiasm to learn is what has led him to successfully establish two of the most well-known establishments in the country. Under to his excellent supervision, ICM group scored the 4th rank in the Wealth management business sector in

Nevertheless, such reduction in diversification would make risk increase. The complete table “Risk and returns of portfolios” provides the different changes. 5. The portfolio between TECO – S&P 500 has an expected return of 14.3% and a standard deviation of 14.1%. In this portfolio the correlation is greater than the one in the other portfolio because the risk-reducing effect is much lower than the one in the portfolio TECO – Gold Hill.

IntroductionLinda Best, a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) from Sarnia, Canada is the founder and sole shareholder of Best Financial Services Inc. which was established on January 1, 2001. Sarnia, the largest city in South Ontario, bordered the United States and was heavily populated with aging baby boomers and blue-collar workers. Best Financial earned its revenues mainly from blue-collar workers nearing retirement. Best financial had formed strong relationships with many clients throughout Sarnia and managed over 1000 financial plans allowing a steady revenue and profit growth. The key services provided by Best Financial are risk management, tax preparation and professional money management. The company’s Assets under Management were

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

As of 2005, Value Trust had outperformed its benchmark index, the S&P 500, for 14 years consecutively. Given that the next longest period of sustained performance was only half as long, 14 consecutive years of excellent performance set a record as the longest streak of success for any manager in the mutual-fund industry. The average annual total return for the past 15 years was 14.6%, which was higher than the S&P’s 500 by 3.67%. Value Trust had 36 holdings, 10 of which accounted for nearly 50% of the fund’s assets. Morningstar gave Value Trust a five-star rating.

Wells Fargo was established in 1852 by Henry Wells and Williams Fargo who joined a group of other investors to form a transportation and banking company. In 1849, gold was discovered in California, which encouraged a huge demand for its cross country shipping and by 1852 Wells Fargo shipped its first consignment of gold. Wells Fargo also established merger deals with Pony expresses which made them one of the pioneers of pony transportation. This company later expanded to a company that offered not just pony and gold transportation services, but also offered banking services by purchasing gold and selling paper bank drafts as good as gold. In 1905, the banking branch of the company merged with the Nevada National Bank and established its new headquarters in San Francisco. ("Wells and Fargo start shipping and banking company", 2016).

In this case, the Partner’s Treasury Department has computed all the portfolios for minimum level of risk with different types of assets, more specifically, adding Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), Commodities or both, from an undefined approach. Since the results are identical as calculated from Mean-Variance Theory, they should be the optimal portfolios for each target level of return. Therefore a graph with efficient frontier, which represents the optimal portfolios with different assets, is constructed based on Exhibit 5 to 8 for comparison. [Appendix B] Technically, any portfolio on the efficient frontier is an optimized portfolio and is indifferent from each other in terms of risk/return trade off.

portfolio change if you assume a correlation between GE and GM of 0.80 or –0.80?

National Mutual Funds (NMF), founded in the 1940s, is one of the most important mutual fund companies in the brokerage industry in the United States. The company has extended from a mutual fund company to a financial center offering mutual funds, brokerage products including stocks and bonds, insurance products, and a variety of planning tools to help customers save for major life needs. However, since the market downturn, which is hurting many brokerage and mutual fund houses, NMF’s profits and operations have been affected significantly. To respond to the market slowdown, Harry Smallwood, President of NMF Retail Services, has come up with a directive to reorganize the call centers in the Retail Services Division in an effort

The Firm’s 94-year history is grounded in undervalued securities, first as a market maker, then as an investor and investment advisor. The Firm’s investment approach derives from the work of the late Benjamin Graham, co-author of the first textbook on investment research, Security Analysis (1934) and author of The Intelligent Investor (1949). Graham, through his investment firm Graham-Newman Corp., was one of the Firm’s primary brokerage clients in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. It was through Graham that the original partners of the Firm developed brokerage relationships with investment legends Walter Schloss and Warren Buffett …

Here, the correlation figure amounted to -0.2090 or -20.90%. Factors highlighting negative returns include an appreciation of the Australian dollar, heavy losses sustained due to the Global Financial Crisis between 2008 and 2009 and stagnated growth throughout the previous decade of -2.1%, (Brailsford, Heaney & Bilson, 2011, p. 87). The loss of investment returns can be minimised by undertaking due diligence and research into asset categories on the investors’ behalf, (Brailsford, Heaney & Bilson, 2011, p. 26).