Risk and Return Characteristics

Return Characteristics of Equity Securities There are two main sources of equity securities’ total return: price change (or capital gain) and dividend income.  The price change represents the difference between the purchase price (Pt–1) and the sale price (Pt) of a share at the end of time t – 1 and t, respectively. For investors who purchase depository…

Non-Domestic Equity Securities

Direct Investing Investors can use a variety of methods to invest in the equity of companies outside of their local market.  Depository Receipts A depository receipt (DP) is a security that trades likeanordinary share on a local exchange and represents an economic interestin a foreign company. It allows the publicly listed shares of a foreign…

Private Versus Public Equity Securities

Private equity securities are issued primarily to instituational investor via non-public offerings, such asprivate placements. There are three primary types of private equity investments: venture capital, leveraged buyouts, and private investment in public equity (or PIPE). Venture capital investments provide “seed” or start-up capital,early-stage financing, or mezzanine financing to companies that are in the early…

Behavioural Finance

Behavioural financeexamines investor behaviour to understand how people make decisions, individually and collectively. Behavioural finance does not assume that people consider all available information in decision-making and act rationally by maximising utility within budget constraints and updating expectations consistent with Bayes’ formula. The resulting behaviours may affect what is observed in the financial markets. Loss…

Implications of the Efficient Market Hypothesis

The implications of efficient markets to investment managers and analysts are important because they affect the value of securities and how these securities are managed. Several implications can be drawn from the evidence on efficient markets for developed markets: Fundamental Analysis Fundamental analysis is the examiniation of publicly available information and the formulaiton of forecasts…

Forms of Market Efficiency

A finding that investors can consistently earn abnormal returns by trading on the basis of information is evidence contrary to market efficiency. In general, abnormal returns are returns in excess of those expected given a security’s risk and the market’s return. In other words, abnormal return equals actual return less expected return. Weak Form In the…