Portfolio Theory Flashcards
What factors are taken into consideration when assessing the suitability of a clients asset allocation? (5)
- Risk tolerance
- Tax position/liability
- Liquidity needs
- Time horizon
- Growth objective
What is the role of diversification in a portfolio? (2)
- To optimise the risk/reward trade off
- This is the role of the fund/investment manager to decide
What is the relationship between liquidity and profit? (2)
- The more liquid the assets e.g. gilts and cash, the lower the return
- Liquidity is needed to meet liabilities e.g. insurance, LDI
What is the function of growth in portfolio construction? (3)
- Funds investing for future gains will have a higher proportion of their capital tied up in equity securities rather than bonds
- Equities in companies that reinvest profits rather than pay out dividend income
- Income and capital growth = total return
What does the clients investment policy statement (IPS) outline? (3)
- The required return
- The specified level of risk
- The required level of liquidity to meet spending
What is the drawback of correlation analysis in diversifying assets? (3)
- Doesn’t work during extreme market conditions
- Many assets become strongly positively correlated
- Especially during economic uncertainty, crisis and during great optimism
What is ‘cost’ associated with in transactions? (4)
- Placing the trade
- Clearing the trade
- Settlement of the trade
- With MTFs and dark pools - costs are associated with the trade itself an tends to be lower
How is the price of an investment e.g. unit in OEIC calculated? (1)
- Net asset value / number of units in the issue
What has the greatest impact on price? (2)
- Demand
- Investors cannot control the supply
What is the relationship between liquidity and price discovery? (2)
- The more buyers and sellers, the greater the capacity for price discovery of the investment
- Stronger the link between liquidity and price discovery
Aside from the price paid by the investor, what other costs are incurred? (5)
- Commission - charged by brokers on equity 10 - 20bps for large institutional trades, 100-150bps for smaller trade. Commission on gilts is typically 0.5%-1% below £5,000 NV - 0% on trades over £1m
- SDRT - 0.5% rounded to the nearest £5 (rounded to 1p on dematerialised shares). Market makers and AIM shares are exempt from this charge
- Takeover levy - £1 on all trades above £10,000
- Bid-offer spread - difference between price market maker will buy/sell the stock - client is on the losing side of the spread
- Opportunity cost - cost of the next best alternative foregone - timing, lack of funds
What has been MiFID’s role in costs? (2)
- Since implementation of MiFID there has been rapid growth of trading channels (LSE, BATS, ChiX) and clearing venues (LCH, Clearnet, ICE Clear Europe)
- Reduced explicit costs, though effect on implicit cost is up for debate
What is meant by capacity? (3)
- The AUM beyond which the fund can no longer deliver returns required by investors
- Where AUM is illiquid, bid-offer spreads are typically wider, increasing the cost of buying and selling
- Illiquidity also creates the inability to meet liabilities
What are the 3 types of capacities of a fund? (3)
- Threshold capacity - level of AUM beyond which the fund cannot achieve its stated objective
- Wealth maximising capacity - level of AUM that maximises the amount of wealth created in both returns to the investor and the management
- Terminal capacity - level of AUM that reduces the investors return, net of transaction costs, to zero
What is passive management? (5)
- Fund manager replicates the returns of a bench market e.g. FTSE100, S&P 500
- Efficient market hypothesis - market price of a security is correctly priced and will have already discounted all available market information
- If EMH is true, it is impossible to identify mis-priced securities in order to outperform them
- ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’ instead of looking for mis-priced stocks to beat the market return
- A portfolio that replicates the market is called a tracker fund
How are tracker funds replicated? (4)
- Replication - buying all of the shares within the index e.g. FTSE 100
- Stratified sampling - buying the most influential holdings within each sector
- Synthetic - buying futures and holding cash
- Optimisation - using historic analysis to determine which stocks have most accurately tracked the index in the past
What are the pros and cons of tracker funds? (4)
Pros
- Cheap
- Little management
Cons
- Follow bear and bull markets
- Sensitive to market movements
What is tracking error? (3)
- Fund not achieving exactly the same return as the relevant index
- Can be positive (outperformed) or negative (underperformed) (+/- basis points)
- Tracking error limits can be set to reduce volatility and therefore potential losses. Also limits potential gains in a falling market
How does tracking error occur? (3)
- Inexact replication of the benchmark; weighting, investment style, volatility/Beta, fundamental characteristics of the investments
- Costs; SDRT, brokerage or commission of trades. The index does not incur any costs - simply an average of share prices
- Changes in the constituents of index being tracked; index changes may not be reflected in funds - takes time to reconstruct a portfolio as quickly as the index itself
How is tracking error calculated? (1)
- Tracking error = total return of the portfolio - total return on the benchmark
What is active fund management? (4)
- Deciding on asset allocation based on the investors objectives e.g. income, capital growth
- Strategic allocation e.g 80% bonds for income growth
- Tactical allocation - asset range are specified around the strategic level to enable market timing adjustments e.g. 70-90% fixed interest
- Top down approach; 1) asset allocation, 2) sector allocation, 3) stock selection
What is strategic asset allocation? (1)
- Long term allocation created by the manager
What is tactical asset allocation? (2)
- Fund manager uses their discretion to make small changes to the asset allocation to take advantage of short term shifts
- Extra returns created by market timing
Summarise sector selection (3)
- Tech and finance are more sensitive to markets - high Betas and considered aggressive stocks
- Utilities tend to be less sensitive to market and have low Betas - defensive stocks performing less badly in falling markets
- Manager creates weighting that will take advantage of the current environment