...stocks is published. To see the list of these 12 companies (as well as all such lists from 1896 to the present),. On October 4, 1916 it was calculated on the stock prices of 20 companies and finally on October 1, 1928 it was increased to 30 companies, the same number as it is today. 2. A stock exchange based in New York City, which is considered the largest equities-based exchange in the world based on total market capitalization of its listed securities. A market index tracks the performance of a specific "basket" of stocks considered to represent a particular market or sector of the U.S. stock market or the economy. There are indices for almost every conceivable sector of the economy and stock market. Many investors are familiar with these indices through index funds and exchange-traded funds whose investment objectives are to track the performance of a particular index. 3. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is important to investors because it is a model for investment products. The Dow Jones Company licenses its index for the creation of mutual funds, exchange traded funds and futures investments. These products trade not only on the U.S. exchanges, but also on international exchanges in Tokyo, London and Toronto. This gives the DJIA added significance for investors worldwide. Also The Dow Jones is important to investors because it tracks the price of 30 stocks of large, familiar and well-managed companies in the United States. It excludes utility and transportation stocks...
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...Introduction Trading with leveraged and inverse ETFs: Financial markets attract both professional and casual traders because of the variety of investment vehicles available. Among the newer entrants into this mix are leveraged and inverse exchange-traded funds ETFs. Lately, these products have been the subject of much attention and have attracted considerable assets. Where traditional ETFs attempt to replicate the performance of a stock market index, leverage and inverse ETFs aim to achieve 2x or 3x long exposure, or -1x, -2x, or -3x short exposure. This, and the accessibility of ETFs, creates a vast number of opportunities for investors of all levels. As with all investment vehicles, however, these ETFs are coupled with a large amount of risk. The structure of these funds also creates a number of unintended consequences on the markets and often leads to questions regarding investor suitability. Since being introduced to the market in 2006, this ETF class has exploded with activity. According to “The Dynamics of Leveraged and Inverse Exchange-Traded Funds” by Minder Cheng and Ananth Madhavan, as of January 2009, 106 leveraged and inverse ETFs have been introduced in the U.S. market alone. The majority, however, of the $22 billion of assets under management , is in 2x and -2x leveraged products, with only a small percentage of the assets under management allocated to the greater leveraged and inverse ETFs. Traditional ETF vs. ETF Leverage: The difference between traditional...
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...Paper topic: Mutual Funds vs ETFs: historical data, argumentative analysis and position. Introduction Mutual Fund is a term, meaning joint venture. As the human minds evolve more civilized, it also has undergone many evolutionary postures. Formerly it was practiced as close ended mutual fund in which combined investment had limits. Simply in those funds a restricted number of investors were allowed to play. As a result they used to have limited profit. While following the same pattern some innovative thoughts were put together along with the basic ingredients of the recipe of mutual funds to make it more reproductive. The consequences resulted in the body of open ended mutual funds. These open ended funds are still hailing the demanding curse of present age. Using the mutual fund scheme was more beneficial for the investors and was less fruitful for the manager or the body managing and investing the funds. Therefore to make more money from limited funds a newer system was stemmed into the fabric of trade. That system was to engage poor into this business by investing money in the form of blocks. This trick helped the managing body to withdraw more money out of the flow in the form of commission. On the contrary it involved less investment share which was easy to contribute by an average investors. Hence it had the characteristics of close ended mutual fund accompanied by replication of index. This system was easy to manipulate and friendly to the traders...
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...Project Proposal Statistical Learning and Data Mining Overview: Efficient asset allocation through statistical learning methods and comparison of methods for the creation of an index tracking ETF (Exchange traded fund) Datasets: The datasets are chosen from the website of the book “Statistics and Data Analysis for Financial Engineering” by David Ruppert. The book is mentioned as one of the references for this course. The two data sets chosen are 1. Stock_FX_Bond.csv 2. Stock_FX_Bond_2004_to_2006.csv The data includes the volumes and adjusted closing prices for GM, F, UTX, CAT, MRK, PFE, MSFT, IBM, C and XOM. The data also contains the volumes and adjusted closing prices for the S&P 500 index. The data set also includes treasury rates for different maturities and rates on corporate bonds as well as foreign exchange rates for the period of 1987 to 2006. Objectives: 1. Optimal portfolios for various levels of Risk. Conventional investors look to attain maximum alpha values (rates of return) at levels of risk they are comfortable with. We can hence at any level of risk, define portfolios that generate maximal returns. In this project, we aim to identify the composition of portfolios that achieves this desired objective. Existing models such as CAPM, along with additional forms of regression will be used to compare with additional methods, not covered in the duration of the class to identify the better methods of portfolio creation. We will use learning tools...
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...Mutual Funds and Exchange Trade Funds Author Good investment planning requires one to find the best investment avenue that will give them the best returns for their capital and is compatible with their financial objectives. According to Bogle (2010), investment strategy is the core issue that investors should consider. Long term investments are key to achieving optimal returns for investors. This paper aims to discuss two investment products that are popular among financial investors and seek to assist the reader to make a sound choice on which avenue to venture in. Mutual Funds Gitman, Joehnk, & Billingsley (2014) define a mutual fund as a financial service organization that receives money from shareholders and invests the money in various portfolios. Mutual funds and ETFs offer risk return opportunities that may not be obtained from purchasing stocks or bonds on your own (Gitman, Joehnk, & Billingsley, 2014, p. 491). Mutual funds offer a broad variety of investment opportunities that investors find appealing. They provide a simple and convenient avenue for investors- especially those investors with limited capital and beginners as stated by Gitman, Joehnk, & Billingsley (2014). Exchange Traded Funds Gitman, Joehnk, & Billingsley (2014) describe an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) as a company whose shares trade on the stock exchanges but unlike mutual funds, their shares can be bought or sold throughout the day. ETFs are usually structured as an index that...
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...An "index fund" describes a type of mutual fund or investment trust whose investment objective typically is to achieve approximately the same return as a particular market index. An Exchange Traded Index Fund is a security that tracks an index, a commodity or a basket of assets like an index fund, but trades like a stock on an exchange. ETIFs experience price changes throughout the day as they are bought and sold. ETIFs, commonly referred to as index-based ETFs, are designed to track the performance of their specified indexes or, in some cases, a multiple of inverses of their indexes. Some people will agree that international investments is good. It allows investors to reduce the risk of their portfolio, but still allowing them with additional profit potentail. If you have the money to spend you would suggest that you invest in international investments. The return and the risk of an investment will depend on the actual currency that was used. The exchange Traded Funds passive nature is a necessity: the funds rely on an arbitrage mechanism to keep the prices at which they trade roughly in line with the net asset values of their underlying portfolios. For the mechanism to work, potential arbitragers need to have full, timely knowledge of a fund's holdings. ETFs are different from Mutual funds in the sense that ETF units are not sold to the public for cash. Instead, the Asset Management Company that sponsors the ETF (Fund) takes the shares of companies comprising the...
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...FUND TRACKING ASSIGNMENT • For this assignment you MUST WORK IN PAIRS. • Pick your partner for this assignment BEFORE the start of WEEK 3 • In the Assignment module in SLATE Content is a link to the google drive spreadsheet where you and your partner must sign up for this assignment. Be sure to register in the correct class. • In the meantime, visit www.globefund.com and familiarize yourself with the content on the website and different ways to select mutual funds. SUBMISSION #1: 1. Due week 4 in SLATE Dropbox (see Dropbox for exact date and time). 2. One partner will invest $10,000 in each of 3 actively managed* mutual funds managed by Canadian mutual fund companies. See Appendix for a list of potential mutual fund companies and funds to choose from. One fund must be chosen from each of the following categories: • Canadian Equity • Emerging Markets Equity • Canadian Fixed Income *Remember, actively managed means it does NOT follow the related index but tries to outperform the index by selecting only what the portfolio managers believes will be the best performing securities. 3. One partner will invest $10,000 in each of 3 passively managed Exchange Traded Funds with one ETF coming from each of the following categories. Canadian Equity STOCK SYMBOL Globefund Code BMO S&P/TSX Capped Composite Index ETF ZCN BMOCANEQ iShares Core S&P/TSX Capped Composite Index ETF XIC IUNSTCID Vanguard Canada - FTSE Canada Index ETF VCE VANMSCCA Emerging...
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...and other factors commodities exchange mcx ncdex four commodities are there gold silver copper crude oil An index fund or index tracker is a collective investment scheme (usually a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund) that aims to replicate the movements of an index of a specific financial market Types of indexing Traditional indexing Indexing is traditionally known as the practice of owning a representative collection of securities, in the same ratios as the target index. Modification of security holdings happens only when companies periodically enter or leave the target index. [edit] Synthetic indexing Synthetic indexing is a modern technique of using a combination of equity index futures contracts and investments in low risk bonds to replicate the performance of a similar overall investment in the equities making up the index. Although maintaining the future position has a slightly higher cost structure than traditional passive sampling, synthetic indexing can result in more favourable tax treatment, particularly for international investors who are subject to U.S. dividend withholding taxes. The bond portion can hold higher yielding instruments, with a trade-off of corresponding higher risk, a technique referred to as enhanced indexing. [edit] Enhanced indexing Enhanced indexing is a catch-all term referring to improvements to index fund management that emphasize performance, possibly using active management. Enhanced index funds employ a variety of enhancement...
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...Ivey School of Business, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 3K7; phone (519) 661-3208; fax (519) 661-3882; e-mail cases@ivey.uwo.ca. Copyright © 2008, Ivey Management Services Version: (A) 2008-07-11 On Friday, January 26, 2007, Alex Sharpe sat in her home office and pondered her investment strategy. During her MBA program, Sharpe had learned that in an efficient market, investors should buy and hold the ‘market portfolio’ because no other portfolio can offer the same expected return at a lower risk. Since the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 was the most commonly used benchmark for the overall U.S. stock market, Sharpe had invested her children’s educational savings in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, a no-load mutual fund constructed to track the performance of the S&P 500. tC The S&P 500 index consists of 500 stocks chosen for market size, liquidity and industry grouping, among other factors. This index is meant to reflect the risk/return characteristics of large-cap stocks. The S&P 500 is a market-value-weighted index, i.e., each stock’s weight in the index is proportionate to its market value. There were...
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...Table of Contents Introduction 3 1. Situation and Risk Profile Analysis 3 1.1 Background 3 1.2 Character 3 1.3 Life style 4 1.4 Time horizon 4 1.5 Objective 4 2. Asset Allocation rationale 5 2.1 Bonds 5 2.2 Equities 5 2.3 Cash 6 2.4 Assets allocation Chart 6 3. Choice of investment Vehicles 6 3.1 ETFs 6 4. Portfolio description 6 4.1 SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average Trust (Core). 7 4.2 Vanguard Total World Stok ETF (Core) 9 4.3 Vanguard Industrial ETF (Satellite) 10 4.4 Vanguard Energy ETF (Satellite) 11 4.5 iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate bond Fund (Core) 12 Conclusion 13 Introduction Making more money or at least preserving one’s wealth are the main reasons for investing. Investing on financial Markets is an option among others with its own set of rules, advantages and setbacks. In order to to be able to pay school expenses for their three children, Mr. and Ms Brown have decided to invest some money in the stock market. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate how Mr. and Ms. Brown proceeded to build their investment portfolio. In the first part of the essay we will analyze their situation to understand their risk profile, time horizon and objective. In the second part, we will expand on the asset allocation rationale to finally decide in the third part which investment vehicle is appropriate. 1. Situation and Risk Profile Analysis 1.1 Background Mr. Brown is a forty year old man, happily married with three children; two...
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...Special Topics on MS-Word In the Academic Writing Context Create documents with enhanced features that help you create, edit, and access documents from almost anywhere. 2010 Instructor Jason CS Chen This Week 12/29/2010 Table of Contents Chapter 1. Company Information 9 Section 1.1 Who we are 9 Section 1.1.1 The following pages describe who we are, what we do and how we do it 10 Section 1.2 About KPMG 10 Section 1.2.1 We work closely with our clients, helping them to mitigate risks and grasp opportunities 10 Section 1.3 Values & culture 10 Section 1.3.1 Our reputation is created by the way the people within our member firms act with clients, colleagues and their communities 10 Section 1.4 Corporate citizenship -- Putting our skills to work 11 Section 1.4.1 Find out more about our corporate citizenship strategy and how we are putting our skills to work 11 Section 1.5 Corporate citizenship -- Organization 11 Section 1.5.1 We have more than 135,000 people operating in over 140 countries 11 Section 1.6 Corporate citizenship -- Performance 11 Section 1.7 More Information 11 Tables Table 1 9 Table 2 19 Figures Figure 1 4 Figure 2 5 Figure 3 6 Figure 4 6 Figure 5 Dow Jones Industrial Average 15 Figure 6 18 Figure 7 18 Figure 8 20 Figure 9 20 In the Academic Writing Context * Initial Settings [Page Layout] > [Page Setup] > [Margins] > [Custom Margins] > Usually...
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...critiques of capitalization-weighting, equity indices with different weighting schemes have emerged, such as "wealth"-weighted (Morris, 1996), “fundamental”-weighted (Arnott, Hsu and Moore 2005), “diversity”-weighted (Fernholz, Garvy, and Hannon 1998) or equal-weighted indices. [edit] Indices and passive investment management There has been an accelerating trend in recent decades to create passively managed mutual funds that are based on market indices, known as index funds. Advocates claim that index funds routinely beat a large majority of actively managed mutual funds; one study[citation needed] claimed that over time, the average actively managed fund has returned 1.8% less than the S&P 500 index - a result nearly equal to the average expense ratio of mutual funds (fund expenses are a drag on the funds' return by exactly that ratio). Since index funds attempt to replicate the holdings of an index, they obviate the need for — and thus many costs of — the research entailed in active management, and have a lower churn rate (the turnover of securities which lose fund managers' favor and are sold, with the attendant cost of commissions and capital gains taxes). Indices are also a common basis for a related...
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...Types of financial intermediaries Financial institutions are like most other businesses in that they exist to make a profit and this is maximized by minimizing their costs and maximizing their revenue. Like most firms they can only survive if they design and sell products and services that can meet demand at a reasonable profit level. We now proceed to look at some of the key types of financial institutions that are involved in the process of financial intermediation; that is, the transfer of funds between surplus and deficit agents. We distinguish between deposit-accepting institutions, such as banks and savings institutions, and other types of financial intermediaries, such as insurance companies, mutual funds/unit trusts, pension funds, hedge funds and private equity and the like. 3.7 deposit institution an institution such as a bank or savings institution that accepts cash deposits Deposit institutions Deposit institutions accept deposits from economic agents. These funds become their liabilities which they then on-lend to make direct loans or investments, which become their assets. Deposit-taking institutions aim to make a profit in the way of 'spread income' between the cost of the deposits that they accept and other sources of funding, and the return that they receive on their investment portfolio in the way of loans, equity stakes and other investments. Examples of deposit institutions include commercial banks, savings banks and building societies. The deregulation...
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...Use this tool as an effective way to identify the merits (PROS) and the drawbacks or costs (CONS) of alternatives. More then a simple pros/cons evaluation, this tool forces you to look at ways of ''FIXING” the CONS - resulting in a final 'picture' of the merits and costs (costs = the fixes, along with the cons you can't fix) for a particular alternative. This is a good technique to use when you have only a couple of alternatives to consider. This tool is also good to use when you have identified one or two remaining alternatives after using other tools (eg. Simple Ranking or SMART) to do a 'reality check' and cost/benefit analysis. I have also seen students use it effectively for indentifying linked decision to a particular alternative and implementation planning. 1. Write down the alternative you plan to evaluate 2. List up all the benefits you can. Use a white board for this, or post-it notes. Then consolidate these by combining and organizing them. (eg. combine those that are similar or redundant by expressing it as one Pro, and eliminate any frivolers PROS that are not important). Write down the consolidated PROS in the template PROS box. 3. Now list up all the Cons (using white board, or post-it notes). Organize and consolidate as you did with the PROS. Write down the consolidated CONS in the box. 4. Now get creative and look at how you can eliminate a each CON by ‘FIXING IT’. For example, say you were assessing the alternative ‘To Get Married’...
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...Vanguard Mutual Fund Evaluation FIN/420 1/26/2014 The Vanguard Group The Vanguard Group offers an array of mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, brokerage, and asset management. When choosing and comparing mutual funds, there are characteristics that you need to first evaluate. This paper will review five different categories of mutual funds that Vanguard Group offers its investors. Actively Managed Common Stock Fund The Selected Value (ticker VASVX) is an actively managed common stock fund with a 4 star Morningstar rating with a minimum investment of $3,000. This fund does not have a front or rear load fee. The total annual fund operating expenses are 0.41% which means that for every $100 you invest, $.41 goes to paying the person who sold you the fund. VASVX is a mid-cap value investment with a low fee level. The fund seeks to provide long-term capital appreciation and income. The fund invests mainly in the stock of mid-size U.S. companies, choosing stocks considered by an advisor to be undervalued. Securities include stocks, bonds, and money market instrument, totaling 132 holdings and ten industries. The five largest holdings as of September 29, 2014 are Micron Technology Inc., Hanesbrand Inc. Common Stock, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. Co, Omnicare, Inc. Common Stock, and Discover Financial Services Com. The fund inception occurred on February 15, 1996 and has been managed by Barrow since 1999. The fund inception date tells us that the mutual fund has been...
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