...Monica, California. In 2002, David Booth is in dilemma considering how should he lead DFA in the future considering current success condition DFA could achieved. The aim of this report is to assess the condition and situation of DFA and help David Booth in making decision as to what to do to excel DFA performance. This report is divided into 5 parts starting from the company background and its business strategy followed by Fama-French Three Factors Model that highly influence the strategy formulation and action taken by DFA. Third part will be DFA’s trading strategy and continued by brief analysis of its new product namely Tax-Managed Funds. Finally, it will be concluded by recommendation given to David Booth considering the content in main body of this report. Overall, it can be said that the main issue is whether DFA should continue its current operational strategy or it should develop new strategy in order to increase its performance among competitors. As in conclusion, it is suggested that DFA should follow current strategy since it has been proven to work well and it brought DFA to be among top 100 companies. COMPANY BACKGROUND AND BUSINESS STRATEGY Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), an investment firm founded in 1981 by David Booth and Rex Sinquefield, is strong believer of Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). DFA has adopted EMH In both its strategic operational as well as daily operation in which it was dedicated to the principle that stock market was efficient and it is...
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...create a list of possible investments that fit within the company’s ideal portfolio. DFA used a strategy to decrease the costs between the client and DFA as well as create value. DFA additionally used a value proposition of DFA by using the academic research to create specialized portfolios focusing on the small cap companies (small cap = 300 mil- 2 bill range). This investment approach focused on the Fama and French model. Their research demonstrated the small cap companies tended to outperform the large cap companies. DFA also added trading capabilities to increase variety among the competitive market while decreasing transaction costs. Passive Approach - Pros the company created low operating expenses, no initial decision making from managers or the investors. Relied on the fundamentals of the Fama and French Model. Cons the company managers do not actively participate with decisions, performance measures are set by the model and therefore does not include trending or forecasting of the stock variety types. Ex. Technology boom 2. What are the Fama-French findings? Do they make sense? Should we...
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...Name: XXXXXX Ahmed XXXXXX Course: XXXXX (Foundation of Financial Analysis and Investment (A) Course: MSC Finance Std: xxxxxxxxx Introduction Asset pricing models are very useful tools in calculating the risk and their respected return for the investors and they are being widely used by financial analyst. From different theories we can determine the value of assets into three steps i.e., Expected Cash Flow, number of periods and the expected rate of returns. Investors have several questions before investing his money in any stock or in any other commodity that is what should be the accuracy of prices of selling or buying the stocks, what could be the risk, what are the factors should be considered that ignores uncertainty and the expected returns of the stock. The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) both are well known pricing model determines the risk factor for analyzing the appropriate returns for the investors in their own unique ways. CAPM model uses the whole market environment as one factor but on the other hand APT uses five different economics factor which is more detailed in describing risk which accelerates for these factors. The adoption of CAPM is in practice but other hand its various criticisms are documented on it as well and academics are working on the new approaches of it such as APT and others is discussed in later paragraphs. In this assignment I will discuss the assumptions of CAPM and APT model and their...
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...Module Code: ______________________________________ Date of Submission: _________________________________ Due Date: _________________________________________ For Evaluator’s Use Only Instructions to Students: 1. Fill all the details clearly with ink / ball point pen. 2. Do not write on the back of this page. Comments: TOTAL MARKS % Evaluator’s Name Evaluator’s Signature Declaration: I / We hold a copy of this assignment / report if the original is lost or damaged I / We hereby certify that no part of this report / assignment has been copied from any other student’s work or from any other source except where due acknowledgement is made in the assignment / report. No part of the assignment / report has been written / produced for me / us by any other person except where collaboration has been authorised by the module leader concerned I / We am / are aware that this work will be reproduced and submitted to plagiarism detection software programs for the purpose of detecting possible plagiarism. Programme: ________________Batch: _________ Semester:__________________Block (if any):______ Module Name: _____________________________ Module Code: _____________________________ Date of Submission: _________________________ Due Date: _________________________________ Group Members Names: 1.___________________ 2.___________________ 3.___________________ 4.___________________ 5.___________________ 6.___________________ 7.___________________ ...
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...Would you invest in DFA? Yes due to steady returns provided by the company and as investors are generally past performance chasers, one has no reason not to invest in DFA. The company was founded on a sound investment style based on its core belief in sound academic research, passive fund management. Until almost the end of the 20th century DFA had found a way to make money actively with a passive investment strategy. But looking forward, according to me it needs to evolve with the times and look for questions regarding its own strategy and its evolution with the times and the questions facing the financial future. As highlighted by the boom in the I.T sector towards the end of the last century that DFA missed out on completely, DFA on principle is always poised to miss out on new technology companies, as they intrinsically have low book to market value. Also my another objection to DFA’s selection of small cap stocks only is that these category of companies are among the worst hit companies during a financial crisis because of their limited access to credit and most of these companies don’t survive a major recession. Even some proponents of the efficient market hypothesis have argued that due to DFA and similar companies investing in this particular style, this style’s edge had been eroded. Lastly many prominent academicians and financial institutions have called into question the efficacy of the efficient market theory due the financial bubble created in...
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...INVESTMENTS - DFA Case study Introduction Dimensional Fund Advisors, further referred to as DFA, is an investment company that bases its strategy mainly on academic research and related theories. They work together with proponents of the efficient market hypothesis, indicating a relatively strong belief in this theory and thus in efficient markets. However DFA also feels that skilled traders have the ability to contribute to a fund’s profits even when the investment is inherently passive and DFA does adjusts its strategy to new findings in the field. In this report we will evaluate the relevance and accuracy of the theories used by DFA, especially the value premium and the size premium where almost all of their funds are based upon. This will lead to comments on the usefulness of these theories to increase the return of DFA’s funds and to recommendations about changes in strategy that will enhance the performance of DFA overall. Performance and strategy so far DFA has performed relatively well over the years, aside from some relatively rough patches in the late 1990s. Growth of the company had been stable and profits high. There was no need to sell shares for liquidity reasons and shares were only sold if they did not fit into a fund anymore. This didn’t happen very often though as DFA had several funds that were “connected”, when a stock in the Micro Cap portfolio grew too big it could be placed into a fund with bigger companies (Small Cap portfolio). An important...
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...Yasmeen Iman Snow Deforest Thompson Gary Oha CAPM Yasmeen Iman Snow Deforest Thompson Gary Oha CAPM Contents Overview of CAPM 1 Advantages and Limitations 3 Breakthroughs and Setbacks 4 Works Cited 6 Overview of CAPM The CAPM was introduced by Jack Treynor , William F. Sharpe , John Lintner and Jan Mossin in 1964, building on the earlier work of Harry Markowitz on diversification and modern portfolio theory (Fama & French, 1982). Sharpe, Markowitz and Merton Miller jointly received the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for this contribution to the field of financial economics. Fischer Black developed another version of CAPM, called Black CAPM or zero-beta CAPM that does not assume the existence of a riskless asset. This version was more robust against empirical testing and was influential in the widespread adoption of the CAPM (Fama & French, 1982). CAPM has become very attractive as a tool that measures risk to possible in relation to expected return, although it is still widely used for estimating the cost of capital for firms and evaluating the performance of managed portfolios. While CAPM is accepted academically, there is empirical evidence suggesting that the model is not as profound as it may have first appeared to be. CAPM’s empirical fallings arise theoretically from many over simplified assumptions made by the model. This has made it difficult to implement valid test for this model (Kristina Zucchi...
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...Stock Picking Skills of SEC Employees Shivaram Rajgopal Schaefer Chaired Professor of Accounting Goizueta Business School Emory University 1300 Clifton Road NE, Atlanta, GA 30030 Email: shivaram.rajgopal@emory.edu Roger M. White PhD Student in Accounting J. Mack Robinson School of Business Georgia State University Email: rwhite42@gsu.edu Preliminary and incomplete Comments welcome This draft: February 18, 2014 Abstract: We use a new data set obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate the trading strategies of the employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). We find that a hedge portfolio that goes long on SEC employees’ buys and short on SEC employees’ sells earns positive and economically significant abnormal returns of (i) about 4% per year for all securities in general; and (ii) about 8.5% in U.S. common stocks in particular. The abnormal returns stem not from the buys but from the sale of stock ahead of a decline in stock prices. We find that at least some of these SEC employee trading profits are information based, as they tend to divest (i) in the run-up to SEC enforcement actions; and (ii) in the interim period between a corporate insider’s paper-based filing of the sale of restricted stock with the SEC and the appearance of the electronic record of such sale online on EDGAR. These results raise questions about potential rent seeking activities of the regulator’s employees. We acknowledge financial assistance from our respective...
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...Journal of Financial Economics 49 (1998) 283—306 Market efficiency, long-term returns, and behavioral finance Eugene F. Fama* Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Received 17 March 1997; received in revised form 3 October 1997 Abstract Market efficiency survives the challenge from the literature on long-term return anomalies. Consistent with the market efficiency hypothesis that the anomalies are chance results, apparent overreaction to information is about as common as underreaction, and post-event continuation of pre-event abnormal returns is about as frequent as post-event reversal. Most important, consistent with the market efficiency prediction that apparent anomalies can be due to methodology, most long-term return anomalies tend to 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights disappear with reasonable changes in technique. reserved. JEL classification: G14; G12 Keywords: Market efficiency; Behavioral finance 1. Introduction Event studies, introduced by Fama et al. (1969), produce useful evidence on how stock prices respond to information. Many studies focus on returns in a short window (a few days) around a cleanly dated event. An advantage of this approach is that because daily expected returns are close to zero, the model for expected returns does not have a big effect on inferences about abnormal returns. * Corresponding author. Tel.: 773 702 7282; fax: 773 702 9937; e-mail: eugene.fama@gsb.uchicago. edu. The comments of Brad Barber, David...
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...Journal of Financial Economics 49 (1998) 283—306 Market efficiency, long-term returns, and behavioral finance Eugene F. Fama* Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Received 17 March 1997; received in revised form 3 October 1997 Abstract Market efficiency survives the challenge from the literature on long-term return anomalies. Consistent with the market efficiency hypothesis that the anomalies are chance results, apparent overreaction to information is about as common as underreaction, and post-event continuation of pre-event abnormal returns is about as frequent as post-event reversal. Most important, consistent with the market efficiency prediction that apparent anomalies can be due to methodology, most long-term return anomalies tend to disappear with reasonable changes in technique. 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved. JEL classification: G14; G12 Keywords: Market efficiency; Behavioral finance 1. Introduction Event studies, introduced by Fama et al. (1969), produce useful evidence on how stock prices respond to information. Many studies focus on returns in a short window (a few days) around a cleanly dated event. An advantage of this approach is that because daily expected returns are close to zero, the model for expected returns does not have a big effect on inferences about abnormal returns. * Corresponding author. Tel.: 773 702 7282; fax: 773 702 9937; e-mail: eugene.fama@gsb.uchicago. edu. The comments...
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...report is Dimensional Fund Advisors, which is an investment fund company. The source of information that is used is from websites and some journals. The main finding in this report is that DFA focusing their investment in small cap stock, as small stock tends to outperform large stock. To conclude, this report will provide evidence on the usefulness of these theories to increase return of DFA’s funds as well as recommendations about changes in strategy that will enhance the performance of DFA overall. Introduction Dimensional Fund Advisors is an investment company that uses its strategy based on academic research as well as related theories. It is based in Santa Monica, California and founded in 1981 by Booth and Rex Sinquefield. They work together with advocate of the efficient market hypothesis, indicating a relatively strong belief in this theory and thus in efficient markets. DFA believe that skilled traders have the capability to pitch in to the fund’s profits, although the investments are inherently passive. Additionally, they also adjust their strategy to new findings in the field. This report will discuss the next step that DFA should implement in order to perform better compared to the other managed funds. DFA’s Business Strategy DFA’s business strategy is based on the core concept that markets are “efficient” which means that no one has the ability to regularly pick stocks and beat the market. In addition, founders of DFA believed that amalgamating solid academic...
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...------------------------------------------------- MAF707 Portfolio investments and Financial Planning ------------------------------------------------- Group Assignment Group 77: Weizhe Shi_900443906 Ran Li_210037023 Yichao FU_900387184 Contents Question 1 3 Analysis of securities and the market index 3 Summary 3 Question 2 7 Question 3 8 Question 4. 9 Standard Consumption of CAPM 9 Expectation errors relied on ex-post data 12 Reference List 14 Question 1 Analysis of securities and the market index Summary Firstly we calculated the monthly return of each securities which depend on the data of adjust close price every month. The formula is the latter month’s adjust close price minus the previous monthly adjust close price then divide the latter month’s adjust close price. On the basis of the results, we moved forward the steps that calculate the mean, median, skewnes, kurtosis, variance and correlation coefficients. Those data have been calculated and presented in excels. Definition and Formula 1. Mean The mean value is the average value of monthly return from Jun 2003 to Dec 2010. The formula is: μ=i=1NXiN where N is the number of the month we count of the return and Xi is the total value of the monthly return. 2. Median The median is the value of the middle item of a set of items that has been sorted into ascending or descending order. In an odd-numbered sample...
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...RANDOLPH B. COHEN Dimensional Fund Advisors, 2002 In June of 2002, David Booth faced a dilemma. His firm, Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), had in recent times shown stellar performance after going through some relatively rough patches in the late 1990s. Growth was steady and profits strong. Yet, Pensions and Investments ranked DFA a mere 96th in size among investment companies (see Exhibit 1). While DFA had never viewed maximizing assets under management as a goal, the ranking did suggest that it might be possible for DFA to achieve more as a firm than it currently was. Should Booth and DFA continue on the path that had brought them this far? Or was this the time for a major initiative that could catapult DFA to a status among the largest firms in the business? The Company and its Clients DFA was an investment firm based in Santa Monica, California. Founded in 1981 by Booth and Rex Sinquefield, two former students at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, DFA was dedicated to the principle that the stock market was “efficient”—that is, while over any given period some investors by luck would outperform the market and others would underperform, no one had the ability to consistently pick stocks that would beat the market. Such beliefs were associated with proponents of index funds, and, indeed, Sinquefield had run one of the very first S&P 500 index funds while at another firm. But DFA was not simply an index fund manager. In addition to efficient markets, DFA’s...
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...Literature Review: Do Markets Work Or Do They Just Work Until They Don’t? “One of the most constant aspects of American life is change – and nowhere is it more evident than in our financial markets.” – Henry Paulson, in his remarks on Blueprint for Regulatory Reform (3/31/2008) It is hard to believe that we have had so many market crashes throughout history and yet there exist so many people that claim they can guarantee certain returns. This fallacy is one of the main components of economics as a study. So called experts have been known to praise certain theories while they unknowingly march into a market crash. In order to understand how market crashes happen, it is critical to understand the beliefs that were held leading up to past crises. In Olivier J. Blanchard’s paper published in 2008 by the National Bureau of Economic Research, he declares that “the state of macro is good” (Blanchard 2008, 2). Blanchard, of MIT, was expressing his contempt with the way in which the macroeconomy appeared to be operating and the ability of economists to explain the operations. He was not alone. Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairman, admitted in October of 2008 to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that he was “shocked because [he had] been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that [the economy] was working exceptionally well.” What had led these renowned experts to believe all was well while the markets were wildly deviating from their...
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...RSM330 Assignment 2 – Group Work Due: March 20, 2015 in class & online Question 1: Fundamental Analysis (Total 20 Marks) a) i. These two companies are both in the Auto Parts and Equipment industry. ii. The auto industry sells discretionary goods, which consumers can afford to purchase more of in a booming economy. Therefore these companies stocks are cyclical since their price can be affected by ups and downs in the economy. b) |Magma |2012 |2013 |2014 | |Net Profit Margin |4.6% |4.5% |5.1% | |Asset Turnover |1.9x |2.0x |2.0x | |Leverage |1.81 |1.86 |2.09 | |ROE |(4.6%)(1.9x)(1.81) |(4.5%)(2.0x)(1.86) = 16.74% |(5.1%)(2.0x)(2.09) | | |= 15.8% | |= 21.3% | |Linamar |2012 |2013 |2014 | |Net Profit Margin |4.5% ...
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