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Lecture

Principles of Finance: Portfolio Optimization and CAPM

In course

MGT-482: Principles of finance

The course provides a market-oriented framework for analyzing the major financial decisions made by firms. It provides an introduction to valuation techniques, investment decisions, asset valuation, financing decisions, and sustainable finance. ...

Description

This lecture covers portfolio optimization, efficient frontier, mean-variance frontier, and the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). It explains the concept of the efficient frontier with multiple assets, the tangent portfolio, and the security market line. The lecture also discusses the implications of diversification, the risk-free rate, and the cost of capital in portfolio management.

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Instructor

Erwan Morellec

ERWAN MORELLEC is Swiss Finance Institute Professor and Professor of Finance at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. He is also the Head of the SFI Léman Centre, the Head of the SFI nation-wide PhD Program, and a CEPR Research Fellow. Formerly on the faculties of the Simon School of Business of the University of Rochester (USA) and HEC Lausanne (Switzerland), he holds a Ph.D. in Finance from HEC Paris. Professor Morellec is most active in the areas of corporate finance and banking and has taught several courses on these subjects to undergraduate, MBA, and doctoral students. His recent research examines the effects of prudential regulation on banks' insolvency risk or the effects of financial market imperfections on corporate investment, financing, and risk management decisions. His research has been presented at major academic conferences and seminar series around the world and is published in top rated academic journals such as the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Economic Theory. He has received several research and teaching awards.

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Economics

Microeconomics: Financial economics

Business

Finance: Investment management

Related concepts (32)

Modern portfolio theory

Modern portfolio theory (MPT), or mean-variance analysis, is a mathematical framework for assembling a portfolio of assets such that the expected return is maximized for a given level of risk. It is a formalization and extension of diversification in investing, the idea that owning different kinds of financial assets is less risky than owning only one type. Its key insight is that an asset's risk and return should not be assessed by itself, but by how it contributes to a portfolio's overall risk and return.

Portfolio (finance)

In finance, a portfolio is a collection of investments. The term “portfolio” refers to any combination of financial assets such as stocks, bonds and cash. Portfolios may be held by individual investors or managed by financial professionals, hedge funds, banks and other financial institutions. It is a generally accepted principle that a portfolio is designed according to the investor's risk tolerance, time frame and investment objectives. The monetary value of each asset may influence the risk/reward ratio of the portfolio.

Portfolio optimization

Portfolio optimization is the process of selecting the best portfolio (asset distribution), out of the set of all portfolios being considered, according to some objective. The objective typically maximizes factors such as expected return, and minimizes costs like financial risk. Factors being considered may range from tangible (such as assets, liabilities, earnings or other fundamentals) to intangible (such as selective divestment). Modern portfolio theory was introduced in a 1952 doctoral thesis by Harry Markowitz; see Markowitz model.

Efficient frontier

In modern portfolio theory, the efficient frontier (or portfolio frontier) is an investment portfolio which occupies the "efficient" parts of the risk–return spectrum. Formally, it is the set of portfolios which satisfy the condition that no other portfolio exists with a higher expected return but with the same standard deviation of return (i.e., the risk). The efficient frontier was first formulated by Harry Markowitz in 1952; see Markowitz model. A combination of assets, i.e.

Volatility smile

Volatility smiles are implied volatility patterns that arise in pricing financial options. It is a parameter (implied volatility) that is needed to be modified for the Black–Scholes formula to fit market prices. In particular for a given expiration, options whose strike price differs substantially from the underlying asset's price command higher prices (and thus implied volatilities) than what is suggested by standard option pricing models. These options are said to be either deep in-the-money or out-of-the-money.

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