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Portfolio Theory and the Capital Asset Pricing Model (Capm) Are Essential Tools for Portfolio Managers and Other Stock Market Investors’

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‘Portfolio theory and the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) are essential tools for portfolio managers and other stock market investors’ In order to be successful, an investor must understand and be comfortable with taking risks. Creating wealth is the object of making investments, and risk is the energy that in the long run drives investment returns. PORTFOLIO THEORY Modern portfolio theory has one, and really only one, central theme: “In constructing their portfolios investors need to look at the expected return of each investment in relation to the impact that it has on the risk of the overall portfolio”. The practical message of portfolio theory is that sizing an investment is best understood as an exercise in balancing its expected …show more content…

If you had invested all of you’re the whole £200 in the alpine resort, you would have made £420. if you had invested the whole £200 in the beach club, you would have lost £120 of your capital, leaving you with only £80 to re-invest-it would take time to get your money back to its original level, and if you attempted to do so by investing again in only one of the two resorts, you might well make a further substantial loss. Thus, the argument for spreading the risk is very strong. The two resorts have negative covariance. Here is the formula for calculating covariance: Lets Ag and Ab be the actual return from alpine resort in good and bad weather respectively, and A be the expected return (average), Bg and Bb be the actual return from the beach club and B the expected return: The covariance between A and B = COVAB = Probability of good weather (Àg – À)(ßg – ß) + probability of bad weather (Ab- À)(Bb-ß) In my example, the probability of good or bad weather are both 0.5, so: COVAB = [0.5(-30-15)(60-15)] + [0.5(60 – 15)(-30-15)] =0.5(-45 * 45) + 0.5(45 * -45) =-0.10125 + - 0.10125 = -0.2025 In real life, however, stocks

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