100% satisfaction guarantee Immediately available after payment Both online and in PDF No strings attached 4.2 TrustPilot
logo-home
Summary

Summary Summery - Investment & Risk Management (A)

Rating
-
Sold
-
Pages
64
Uploaded on
10-11-2025
Written in
2025/2026

This summary consists of all lectures and tutorials from the Investment & Risk Management course (Financial Management track) in the Master's in Business Administration program, taught by Xiaohong Huang. It also includes personal notes and additional explanations. The tutorials consist of both the assignments and the answers.

Show more Read less
Institution
Course











Whoops! We can’t load your doc right now. Try again or contact support.

Written for

Institution
Study
Course

Document information

Uploaded on
November 10, 2025
Number of pages
64
Written in
2025/2026
Type
Summary

Subjects

Content preview

Investment and Risk management
Lectures & Tutorials

Learning objectives
- Explain financial risk management and the hedging motives of firms;
- Apply the fundamental models in valuing financial assets (e.g. stocks and
financial derivatives);
- Demonstrate a good knowledge of financial derivatives (e.g. futures,
forwards, swaps and options);
- Identify various financial risks (e.g. interest rate risk, foreign exchange risk)
faced by (international) companies and analyze how these risks can be
managed;
- Analyze empirical research on investments and financial risk management.
Prior knowledge required (!!!)
- Concept of time value of money, compute PV and FV
- Fundamental knowledge of stocks and bonds
- Compute percentage return
- Some mathematical skills, e.g. solve a one-variable equation and a system
of two equations with two variables.

Lecture 1 Introduction to risk and return (02-09)
- Relation between risk and return = higher risk means higher return
- Risk = possibility of loss

Financial Markets
- The markets where financial assets are traded.
- Financial institutions obtain funds from savers and then use these funds for
investments (buy securities).
- Facilitate inter-temporal borrowing and lending (allowing to enlarge choices
between present and future income/consumption).
- Allocate resources and provide pricing information



 Financial institutions are intermediary that facilitate the optimal use of
capital
 Higher risk = higher return

Investment in Financial Assets / Securities / Instruments
Financial assets = assets that can be traded in the financial market
Four fundamental financial assets:
1. Stocks  risk factor, because their prices fluctuate based on company
performance, market conditions, and investor expectations.
2. Bonds  the price of the bond is determined by interest rates
a. When investing in bonds, you will receive the interest rates
3. Foreign exchange  the exchange rate is a risk factor
4. Commodities  the commodity price forms a risk

, Stocks Futures
Bonds Forwards
Foreign Exchange Swaps
Commodities Warrants
Convertibles
….
- Fluctuations in the prices of stocks, bonds, foreign exchange, and are key
determinants of financial risk factors

 A derivative is a security whose value depends on the values of underlying
security (i.e. stock, foreign exchange, commodity). Derivatives to reduce
the risks.

Financial institutions facilitate the optimal use of funds. They allocate resources
and provide pricing information.

Return and expected return
Individual asset with risk and return
Portfolio of assets with risk (portfolio = group of assets)
Diversification of portfolio risk:
1. Systematic risk: need to manage this risk  beta
2. Unsystematic risk

Portfolio risk = Rho (ρ)
o Varies between (-1, 1)
o 0 means no relation
- You invest 100 euro in a stock. Suppose at the end of the period, the value
of your investment will be as follows, and no dividend will be paid out
during the period.
Ending Return (r) Probability of
value state (p)
State 1 (Good 140 = (140-100)/100 = 0.25
economy) 40%
State 2 110 = (110 – 100)/100 = 0.50
10%
State 3 (Bad 80 = (80 – 100) /100 = - 0.25
economy) 20%




- Expended return is important to make an investment decision
- Expected return is also called mean return or mu (μ)

Risk
- Variability in returns is the risk, measured by variance or standard
deviation
Return (r) Squared deviation Probability of
state (p)
State 1 (Good 40% (40% - 10%)2 0.25
economy)

, State 2 10% (10% - 10%)2 0.50
State 3 (Bad -20% (-20% - 10%)2 0.25
economy)




- Formula sheet
will be available!
Standard deviation  how valuable your return will be
Historical return and risk
- You have observed returns over the past three Return
months. (r)
What is the average return and risk? Month 1 40%
 There is no more “expected” return, because it is Month 2 10%
Month 3 -20%
in the past




Portfolio return and Risk equations
- Portfolio = a group of assets
- x stands for the weight, so the sum of all x’s is 100%



- X = weight of assets
- You have to multiply with ρ if the assets interact, only in two boxes!




 When the assets interact with itself, the correlation is 1. So you don’t need
to multiply with rho (ρ)
 When the assets are not well correlated (so lower ρ), you reduce the risk of
your investments.

Portfolio Risk Example
Example

, - Suppose you invest 60% of your portfolio in Southwest Airlines and the
remainder in Amazon. The expected return on your Southwest investment
is 15.0% and on Amazon is 10.0%.
- The expected return on your portfolio is:
o Expected return (0.60 * 15) (0.40 *10) = 13%
- The standard deviation of returns was 26.6% for Amazon and 27.9% for
Southwest Airlines.
1. Assume a correlation coefficient of 1.0 and calculate the portfolio




variance.
2. Assume a correlation coefficient of 0.26 and calculate the portfolio
variance.




3. Assume a correlation coefficient of –1 and calculate the portfolio
variance




Portfolio of two assets with different correlation coefficient




- You want to maximize the
mean return and minimize the variance (standard deviation)
- Rho (ρ) is the parameter that determines the curve connecting the dots of
the two assets.
o If the correlation (ρ) = 1, a straight line connects the two assets.
σp2 =
- The smaller the ρ, the curve will be more to the left.
$7.83
Get access to the full document:

100% satisfaction guarantee
Immediately available after payment
Both online and in PDF
No strings attached


Also available in package deal

Get to know the seller

Seller avatar
Reputation scores are based on the amount of documents a seller has sold for a fee and the reviews they have received for those documents. There are three levels: Bronze, Silver and Gold. The better the reputation, the more your can rely on the quality of the sellers work.
L273 Universiteit Twente
Follow You need to be logged in order to follow users or courses
Sold
77
Member since
3 year
Number of followers
30
Documents
33
Last sold
3 weeks ago

2.9

8 reviews

5
3
4
1
3
0
2
0
1
4

Recently viewed by you

Why students choose Stuvia

Created by fellow students, verified by reviews

Quality you can trust: written by students who passed their tests and reviewed by others who've used these notes.

Didn't get what you expected? Choose another document

No worries! You can instantly pick a different document that better fits what you're looking for.

Pay as you like, start learning right away

No subscription, no commitments. Pay the way you're used to via credit card and download your PDF document instantly.

Student with book image

“Bought, downloaded, and aced it. It really can be that simple.”

Alisha Student

Frequently asked questions