Week 1 - Introduction to Investments, Financial Instruments, Recent Trends Flashcards
What is risk?
- we don’t know what is going to happen, but we can describe the likely outcomes with a probability distribution
- total risk, systematic risk, downside risk, tail risk,
- some risks are priced in some are not
The investment process
- Asset allocation
- Security selection
- Risk-return trade-off
- Market efficiency
- active vs. passive management
- timing for active management
- efficient portfolio for passive management
- once the portfolio is established., it is updated and rebalanced by selling existing securities and using the proceeds to buy new securities, by investing additional funds to increase the overall size of the portfolio, or by selling securities to decrease the size of the portfolio
Traditional finance
- people are rational
- people hold optimal portfolios (e.g., as described by the mean-variance portfolio theory)
- expected returns on investments are determined only by their risks
- markets are efficient, in the sense that price equal fair values
Behavioural finance
- incorporates knowledge about people’s wants, their cognitive errors and emotional shortcuts
- -> people have only limited attention and limited power to process information
- -> people care more than high expected return and low risk (e.g., social responsibility)
- -> people find it difficult to figure out and follow the optimal investment strategy, e.g., weak self control and peer influence
- -> markets are not efficient
Investor heterogeneity in practical setting…
- under CAPM, all investors hold the same (market) portfolio
IN REALITY, investors are different: - short-term vs. long-term horizon
- sophisticated informed vs. inexperienced uninformed
- investors also have different preferences
Three ways too profitable trading
- Take calculated risk
- become more informed than others
- take advantage of naïve investors/noise traders
What are real assets?
- the land, buildings, machines, and knowledge that can be used to produce goods and services
What are financial assets?
- stocks and bonds; do not contribute to the productive capacity of the economy. Instead, these assets are the means by which individual in well-developed economies hold their claims on real assets
- while real assets generate net income to the economy, financial assets simply define the allocation of income or wealth among investors
What are the three broad types of financial assets?
- fixed income
- equity
- derivatives
What are fixed income securities?
- promise either a fixed stream of income or a stream of income determined by a specified formula
How do you classify financial assets?
- money market
- capital market
What is money market?
- refers to debt securities that are short-term, highly marketable, and generally very low risk: i.e. treasury bills, bankers’ acceptances and commercial paper
What are fixed-income capital markets?
- includes long-term securities such as government of Canada bonds, as well as bonds issued by federal agencies. provinces, municipalities, and corporations
What are derivative securities?
- such as options and futures contracts, provide payoffs that are determined by the price of other assets
What is the risk-return trade-off?
- there is a risk-return trade-off in the securities markets, with higher-risk assets priced to offer higher expected returns
What are treasury bills?
- the most marketable of all Canadian money-market instruments
- represent the simplest form of borrowing: the government raises money by selling bills to the public. Investors buy the bills at a discount from the stated maturity value. The different is the investors earnings.
- T-bills with initial maturities of 3,6, and 12 months are issued bi-weekly
- sold via auctions; don’t need to be purchase right away
- highly liquid –> easily converted to cash and sold at low transaction costs with not much price risk
What are certificates of deposit?
- a time deposit with a charter bank. Time deposits may not be withdrawn on demand. The bank pays interest and principal to the depositor at the end of the fixed term of the deposit
- issued by banks to finance lending activities
- may not be withdrawn on demand
- the bank pays the principal and the interest to the depositor only at the end of the fixed term
- a similar time deposit for smaller amounts is known as a Guaranteed Investment Certificate (GIC)
- although both CDs and GICs are non-transferable in Canada, some bank time deposits are negotiable
What is commercial paper?
- Maturity is <270 days; sold at a discount of face value (zero-coupon)
- large well-known companies often issue their own short-term unsecured debt notes rather than borrowing directly from banks
- commercial paper is backed by a bank of credit, which gives the borrower access to cash that can be used (if needed) to pay off the paper at maturity
- mainly held by institutional investor; large denominations
- -> money market and mutual funds hold a majority of CP
- CP attractive because yields are typically higher than other MM –> low risk; CP often issued with a letter of credit form the bank
What are federal funds?
- U.S. banks are required to maintain deposits at the Fed
- banks with more than the minimum can end out funds to banks under the minimum requirement
- -> most loans are overnight
- -> interest rate is called the fed funds rate; set by the fed
- major Canadian financial institutions borrow and lend one-day funds among themselves; the Bank of Canada sets a target level for this rate, which is often referred to as the Bank’s Policy Interest Rate. This rate affects other key interest rates in Canada
What is the federal funds rate?
- the rate of interest on very short-term loans among financial institutions
What is the LIBOR market?
the LIBOR is the rate at which large banks in London are willing to lend money among themselves. This rate, which is quoted on U.S. dollar-denominated loans, has become the premier short-term interest rate quoted in the European money market
Yields on MM Instruments
- the securities of the money market do promise yields greater than those on default-free T-bills, at least in part because of greater relative riskiness
- in addition, many investors require more liquidity; thus they will accept lower yields on securities such as T-bills that can be quickly and cheaply sold
What are treasury notes and bonds?
- treasury notes and bonds are used to finance government spending
- -> t-notes: maturity 1-10 years
- -> t-bonds: >10 years
- pay semi-annual coupons and face value at maturity
What are corporate bonds?
- firms use corporate bonds to borrow (raise) money directly from the public
- typically pay semi-annual coupons over their lives and return the face value to the bondholder at maturity
- riskier than t-bonds
- rated by agencies