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Finance Questions and Solutions

This document provides solutions to 5 finance problems involving concepts like margin requirements, short selling, portfolio expected returns and standard deviations, asset allocation, and optimal portfolios. Detailed calculations are shown for determining maximum shares that can be bought on margin, prices that trigger margin calls, expected returns and risks of individual stocks and combined portfolios, and identifying optimal allocations between risky and risk-free assets.

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Eli Koech
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
311 views

Finance Questions and Solutions

This document provides solutions to 5 finance problems involving concepts like margin requirements, short selling, portfolio expected returns and standard deviations, asset allocation, and optimal portfolios. Detailed calculations are shown for determining maximum shares that can be bought on margin, prices that trigger margin calls, expected returns and risks of individual stocks and combined portfolios, and identifying optimal allocations between risky and risk-free assets.

Uploaded by

Eli Koech
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Finance Questions:Solutions

Author:
Instructor:
Institution:

Problem 1
You have $30,000 in your margin account, and you want to invest in BMO stock. The minimum
margin requirement for BMO is 30%. You just got a quote on BMO as follows:
Bid: 55.25
Ask: 55.26
The interest rate on the margin loan is 6% per annum.
If you want to buy BMO in margin, what is the maximum number of shares can you buy?
Suppose you want to buy 1200 shares of BMO in margin. Answer the following questions:
What is the initial margin ratio?
Suppose you are going to hold the shares for one year. At what price at the end of next year will your
investment break even? (assuming no margin calls in the year)
How far could the stock price fall before getting a margin call?
If the stock price falls to $40, you would get a margin call. If this happens, how much new fund would
you need to add to your account to respond the margin call?

Solution
The shares will be bought at the ask price, as it is higher than the bid price. So, cost of buying 1
share is 55.26
Amount for 1200 shares = no. of shares*price per share = 1200*55.26 = 66,312
Amount in margin account = 30,000. Thus amount required on margin = Total purchase price amount in margin account.
= 66,312 - 30,000 = 36,312
Initial margin ratio = amount in margin account/investment purchased on margin
= 30,000/36,312 = 0.83

Interest rate = 6%. Interest amount for 1 year = interest rate*amount of loan
= 6% of 36,312 = 2,179
Total investment on 1,200 shares = amount paid for purchase + loan interest = 66,312+2,179 =
68,491
Break even price = total investment/no. of shares = 68,491/1,200 = 57.08 (break even price)
Let the price be (after falling) "x". Total price = 1,200x
30% of margin is required. Balance after margin = 70%
70% of 1,200 x = 840x
So 840x = 30,000 (amount of initial margin)
or x = 35.71. If the stock price falls to 35.71 or lower amount, you will get a margin call.
at $40, value of investment = 40*1200 = 48,000
70% of 48,000 = 33,600
So new fund needed = Current margin value - amount in margin account
= 33,600 - 30,000 = 3,600

Problem 2
Assume you sell short 100 shares of common stock at $70 per share, with initial margin at 55%. The
minimum margin requirement is 30%. The stock will pay no dividends during the period, and you will
not remove any money from the account before making the offsetting transaction.
At what price would you face a margin call?
If the price is $86 at the end of the period, what is your margin at that point?
What would be your profit if you repurchase the stock at $63/share?

Solution
Initial Margin =55%=70*0.55=38.5

Money borrowed=70-38.5=31.5
Maintenance Margin=30%=70*0.3=21
Maximum allowable borrowed funds=100%-30%=70%=0.7*70=49
There will be margin call when the borrowed money reaches 49 or loss=49-31.5=17.5
A loss of 17.5 will occur when underlying rises by 17.5 as we are short on the underlying
or , underlying closes at 70+17.5= 87.5
Thus at 87.5 we will face margin call
At 86, the margin = initial margin +profit/loss= (38.5-(86-70))*100=$2250
Profit If I repurchase the stock at 63=(70-63)*100=$700

Problem 3
Use the following expectations on stocks X and Y to answer the questions below:
Bear Market

Normal Market

Bull Market

Probability

0.2

0.5

0.3

Stock X

-20%

18%

50%

Stock Y

-15%

20%

10%

The correlation between stock X and Y is 0.4.


a.

What is the expected return for each stock?

b.

What is the standard deviation for each stock?

c.

Assume you invest your $100,000 in a portfolio with $90,000 in stock X and $10,000 in stock Y. What are
the expected return and standard deviation of your portfolio?

Solution

Problem 4
You have $800,000 invested in a complete portfolio that consists of a portfolio of risky assets (P) and
T-Bills. The information below refers to these assets.
E(rp)=12.00%
?p =7.00%
T-Bill rate=3.6%
Proportion of T-Bill in the complete portfolio: 20%
Proportion of risky portfolio P in the complete portfolio: 80%
Composition of P:
Stock A

40%

Stock B

25%

Stock C

35%

Total

100%

What is the expected return on your complete portfolio?


What is the standard deviation of your complete portfolio?
What are the dollar amounts of Stocks A, B, and C, respectively, in your complete portfolio?
If your degree of risk aversion is A=4, is your complete portfolio optimal? (assuming P is the optimal
risky portfolio)

Solution

Total investment = 800,000


Amount in t-bills = 20% of 800,000 = 160,000
Amount in risky assets = 800,000 - 160,000 = 640,000
Interest on t-bills = 3.6% of 160,000 = 5,760
Return on portfolio = 7% (given) = .07*640,000 = 44,800
Thus, expected return = interest on t-bills+return on stocks = 5,760+44,800 = 50,560
rate of return = 50,560/800,000 = 6%
Dollar amount of stocks:
Stock A = 40% . P amount = 640,000. Thus A = .4*640,000 = 256,000
Stock B = .25*640,000 = 160,000
Stock C = .35*640,000 = 224,000
Degree of risk aversion = 4 (beta)
Using CAPM = risk free rate+beta*(market return - risk free rate)
3.6%+4(7-3.6) = 3.6+13.6 = 17.2%
As, return on portfolio is less than return per CAPM, it is not an optimal portfolio

Problem 5
SPY and XIU are ETFs tracking the S&P 500 and S&P/TSX 60 index, which are often
used as proxies for the US and Canadian stock markets, respectively. From a set of
their historical data, the annual expected returns and standard deviations of those
two ETFs and their covariance are estimated as follows:
SPY:
E(r) = 0.36

0.26

XIU:
E(r) = 0.44
0.28

Covariance between= 0.0568


Suppose that you have $5 million to invest for one year and you want to invest this
money into SPY, XIU and the Canadian one-year T-bill. Assume that the interest rate
of the one-year T-Bill is 6% per annum.
Suppose that you have the following utility function:
U=E(r) 2
Answer following questions using EXCEL:
1 Draw the opportunity set offered by these two securities (with an increment of 0.01
in
weight).
2 What is the optimal portfolio of SPY and XIU?
3 Determine your optimal asset allocation among SPY, XIU, and T-Bill, in percentage
and in dollar amounts.

Solution

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