The Deviation between a Stock's Market Price and Its Intrinsic Value

As Chapter 10 questions, if further evidence continues to surface that capital markets do not always behave in accordance with the efficient market hypothesis, then should we reject the research that has embraced the EMH as a fundamental assumption? In this regard we can return to earlier chapters of this book in which we emphasised that theories are abstractions of reality. Capital markets are made of individuals and as such it would not (or perhaps, should not) be surprising to find that the

A firm’s intrinsic value refers to the true worth of stock in that firm which is calculated on return data and accurate risks. On the other hand, a firm’s current stock price talks about its market price as a whole as perceived by an

1. True or False: According to the CAPM, a stock's expected return is positively related to its beta.

CAPM is a model that describes the relationship between risk and expected return, and the formula itself measures the expected return of the portfolio. Mathematically, when beta is higher, meaning the portfolio has more systematic risk (in comparison to the market portfolio), the formula yields a higher expected return for the portfolio (since it is multiplied by the risk premium and is added to the risk free interest rate). This makes sense because the portfolio needs to

The Capital Assets Price Model (CAPM), is a model for pricing an individual security or a portfolio. Its basic function is to describe the relationship between risk and expected return, which is often used to estimate a cost of equity (Wikipedia, 2009). It serves as a model for determining the discount rate which is used in calculating net present value. The CAPM says that the expected return of a security or a portfolio equals the rate on a risk-free security plus a risk premium. The formula is:

a) Here we have the expected return and beta for two assets. We can express the returns of the two assets using CAPM. If the CAPM is true, then the security market line holds as well, which means all assets have the same risk premium. Setting the reward-to-risk ratios of the assets equal to each other and solving for the risk-free rate, we find:

an accurate estimation of the intrinsic value of an asset takes into account value of the underlying asset that is calculated through quantitative analysis of its actual quality, including all parts of the business. This worth might possibly be reflected in the present market valuation. quality-seeking investors obtain the value through utilizing various financial approaches, in order to assess the inherent estimation of stocks.

Keynes (1936, p155-56) describes the stock market using an analogy between professional investment and newspaper beauty contest: “Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole…It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligence to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practice the fourth, fifth, and higher degrees.” The Stock Market decisions work based on conventional values too, where each is not concerned with determining the real stock value, but the market value the community will place on the stock, before everyone else does.

Investors hold diversified portfolios : One of the assumptions of CAPM model is that investors are holding only portfolios which are subjected to systematic risk , the unsystematic risk can be ignored , therefore the unsystematic risk has been ignored (Lakonishok & Shapiro , 1986)

Solutions to Valuation Questions 1. Assume you expect a company’s net income to remain stable at $1,100 for all future years, and you expect all earnings to be distributed to stockholders at the end of each year, so that common equity also remains stable for all future years (assumes clean surplus). Also, assume the company’s β = 1.5, the market risk premium is 4% and the 20-30 year yield on risk free treasury bonds is 5%. Finally, assume the company has 1,000 shares of common stock outstanding. a. Use the CAPM to estimate the company’s equity cost of capital. • re = RF + β * (RM – RF) = 0.05 + 1.5 * 0.04 = 11% b. Compute the expected net distributions to stockholders for each future year. • D = NI – ΔCE = $1,100 – 0 = $1,100 c. Use the

The efficient market, as one of the pillars of neoclassical finance, asserts that financial markets are efficient on information. The efficient market hypothesis suggests that there is no trading system based on currently available information that could be expected to generate excess risk-adjusted returns consistently as this information is already reflected in current prices. However, EMH has been the most controversial subject of research in the fields of financial economics during the last 40 years. “Behavioural finance, however, is now seriously challenging this premise by arguing that people are clearly not rational” (Ross, (2002)). Behavioral finance uses facts from psychology and other human sciences in order to

Even though there are flaws in the CAPM for empirical study, the approach of the linearity of expected return and risk is readily relevant. As Fama & French (2004:20) stated “… Markowitz’s portfolio model … is nevertheless a theoretical tour de force.” It could be seen that the study of this paper may possibly justify Fama & French’s study that stated the CAPM is insufficient in interpreting the expected return with respect to risk. This is due to the failure of considering the other market factors that would affect the stock price.

First time this phenomenon was presented by the economists Rajnish Mehra and Edward Prescott in 1985. They discovered that the return from US equity investments in comparison to the return from a risk free government securities had been much far above during the twentieth century to be interpreted by the traditional economic theories (Siegel and Thaler, 1997).

Richard Roll, and University and Auburn, University of Washington, and University of Chicago educated economist, began his career researching the effect of major events of stock prices. This experience likely helped him reach the two conclusions he makes in his 1977 “A Critique Of The Asset Pricing Theory’s Tests”, one of the earliest and most influential arguments against CAPM. In the paper, Roll makes two major claims: that CAPM is actually a redundant equation that just further proves the concept of mean-variance efficiency, and that it is impossible to conclusively prove CAPM. His first claim relates to mean-variance efficiency: the idea that mathematically one must be able to create a portfolio that offers the most return for a given amount of risk. Roll claims that all CAPM is doing is testing a portfolio’s mean variance efficiency, and not actually modeling out projected future returns. The second claim in the paper is that there is not enough data about market returns for CAPM to ever prove conclusive. Even if modern technologies could help alleviate some of the burden of testing market returns for publicly traded equities, there is still no way to account for the returns of less liquid markets, where there is less public information. This means it is impossible for

First I will deal with the unrealistic assumptions that must be present for the CAPM model to hold true. These include but are not limited to: All investors are risk averse by nature, there is unlimited capital available to borrow at the risk free rate of return and that there are no taxes, inflation or transaction costs.