Answers to Selected Practice Exam Questions 1. A pension fund holds $50 million portion of its portfolio in an indexed position of the NASDAQ 100, which has a dividend yield of 0.75 percent. It would like to convert that position to the risk-free asset for a two-month period as it forecasts bad news in the economy. It has decided to do this using a two-month futures contract on the NASDAQ 100, which is priced at $148472, per contract. Each contract consists of 100 times the index. The risk-free rate
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Internet Bubble Table of Contents 1. The Beginning 2. World Wide Web and Internet-Not The Same Thing 3. Rise of the World Wide Web 4. Fall of The World Wide Web 5. Conclusion The Beginning The World Wide Web was officially introduced to the world on August 6, 1991 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The World Wide Web refers to a system of resources that will facilitate individuals using computer to view and interact with different type of information. The concept of the World
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fundamentally opposing strategic outlooks: eBay wants commerce to be more decentralized (around its GSI/Magento partners and eBay marketplaces sellers) and Amazon wants it to be more centralized (around itself). First, some background. During the dot-com boom, many largest offline brands debated how to best move their businesses online. Some tried to build their own websites from scratch. Others partnered with commerce technology providers. Toys ‘R’ Us took a novel approach and signed a “strategic alliance”
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Case 1: The Role of Capital Market Intermediaries in the Dot-Com Crash of 2000 1. What is the intended role of each of the institutions and intermediaries discussed in the case for the effective functioning of capital markets? The intended role for intermediaries and institutions were different. For example, Venture Capitalist role was to help business develop a firm ground in which firms could depend on when going public. Venture Capitalist were the safeguard for companies decisions on when
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F5 Networks is an application services firm focused on networking and logistical enterprise services. They are expanding quickly and with great success. In order to support the increasing demands of their products they must be sure to expand the rest of the departments within the company at an even rate. While F5 continues to grow and develop new products and services it also acquiring new companies like Versafe, a company that specializes in real-time web protection and security it must ensure
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The Dot com boom/bust An economic bubble exists whenever the price of an asset that may be freely exchanged in a well-established market first soars to levels that cannot be justified (Ironman, 2010). ‘Investors’ push the price of the asset up by irrationally purchasing it. Eventually, the market realizes that the asset price is unjustified and the bubble bursts. More often than not, the bust happens in an all-of-a-sudden manner resulting in people losing huge sums of money. At the same time, these
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convenient services. Given that the number of startups is now estimated at 12,000, these slices can add up to a major threat. “The changes to come over the next 10 years will be less visible than the global financial crisis or the bursting of the dot-com bubble – and yet their impact on banking’s economics and even fundamental business models will be much more substantial,” McKinsey said in its 2015 annual review of global banking, released on Wednesday. To quantify the threat, McKinsey looked at
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STRATEGY DISCUSSION Question 1: Red Ocean Analysis Explain why anyone applying Michael Porter’s “Five Forces” competitive analysis in 1984 would have told Guy Laliberté not to start another circus. Explain your reasoning. Applying Michael Porter’s Five Forces to Guy Laliberté’s decision to start ‘another’ circus would lead individuals to come to one of two conclusions, depending on how in-depth they understood Laliberté’s plan. On the surface level, his plan seems to be an inevitable
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of the Dynamic Conditional Correlation Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (DCC-GARCH). We estimate the DCC’s forecasting ability relative to unconditional volatility in three equity-based crashes: the S&L Crisis, the Dot-Com Boom/Crash, and the recent Credit Crisis. The assets we use are the S&P 500 index, 10-Year US Treasury bonds, Moody’s A Industrial bonds, and the Dollar/Yen exchange rate. Our results suggest that the choice of asset pair may be a determining
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I recently got an email from a founder that helped me understand something important: why it's safe for startup founders to be nice people. I grew up with a cartoon idea of a very successful businessman (in the cartoon it was always a man): a rapacious, cigar-smoking, table-thumping guy in his fifties who wins by exercising power, and isn't too fussy about how. As I've written before, one of the things that has surprised me most about startups is how few of the most successful founders are like
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