How to Build an Investment Portfolio

1. How to Build an Investment Portfolio The Determinants of Portfolio Choice • The determinants of portfolio choice, sometimes referred to as determinants of asset demand, are: • The saver’s wealth or total amount of savings to be allocated among investments • 2. The expected rate of return from an investment compared with the expected rates of return on other investments • 3. The degree of risk in the investment compared with the degree of risk in other investments • 4. The liquidity of the investment compared with the liquidity of other investments • 5. The cost of acquiring information about the investment compared with the cost of acquiring information about other investments

2. Wealth In general, when we view financial markets as a whole, we can assume that an increase in wealth will increase the quantity demanded for most financial assets. Expected Rate of Return Expected return The return expected on an asset during a future period; also known as expected rate of return. Risk Risk The degree of uncertainty in the return on an asset. Liquidity The greater an asset’s liquidity, the more desirable the asset is to investors The Cost of Acquiring Information All else being equal, investors will accept a lower return on an asset that has lower costs of acquiring information.

3. Defining Risk Risk is a measure of uncertainty about the future payoff to an investment, measured over some time horizon and relative to a benchmark.

4. Measuring Risk • We must become familiar with the mathematical concepts useful in thinking about random events.

5. Possibilities, Probabilities, and Expected Value • Probability theory states that considering uncertainty requires: • Listing all the possible outcomes. • Figuring out the chance of each one occurring. • Probability is a measure of the likelihood that an event will occur. • It is always between zero and one. • Can also be stated as frequencies.

6. Variance and Standard Deviation • The variance is the average of the squared deviations of the possible outcomes from their expected value, weighted by their probabilities. • Compute expected value. • Subtract expected value from each of the possible payoffs and square the result. • Multiply each result times the probability. • Add up the results.

7. Value at Risk • Sometimes we are less concerned with spread than with the worst possible outcome • Example: We don’t want a bank to fail • Value at Risk (VaR): The worst possible loss over a specific horizon at a given probability. • For example, we can use this to assess whether a fixed or variable-rate mortgage is better.

8. Risk Aversion, the Risk Premium, and the Risk-Return Trade-off • Most people do not like risk and will pay to avoid it because most of us are risk averse. • Insurance is a good example of this. • A risk averse investor will always prefer an investment with a certain return to one with the same expected return but any amount of uncertainty. • Therefore, the riskier an investment, the higher the risk premium. • There is a tradeoff between risk and expected return.

9. Sources of Risk: Idiosyncratic and Systematic Risk • All risks can be classified into two groups: • Those affecting a small number of people but no one else: idiosyncratic or unique risks • Those affecting everyone: systematic or economy-widerisks

10. Reducing Risk through Diversification • Some people take on so much risk that a single big loss can wipe them out. • Traders call this “blowing up.” • Risk can be reduced through diversification, the principle of holding more than one risk at a time. • This reduces the idiosyncratic risk an investor bears. • One can hedge risks or spread them among many investments.

11. Hedging Risk • Hedging is the strategy of reducing idiosyncratic risk by making two investments with opposing risks.

12. Spreading Risk • You can’t always hedge as investments don’t always move in a predictable fashion. • The alternative is to spread risk around. • Find investments whose payoffs are unrelated. • We need to look at the possibilities, probabilities and associated payoffs of different investments.

13. Spreading Risk • The more independent sources of risk you hold in your portfolio, the lower your overall risk. • As we add more and more independent sources of risk, the standard deviation becomes negligible. • Diversification through the spreading of risk is the basis for the insurance business.