An Investor Is Considering Purchasing Two Stocks for a Portfolio

question 73

Essay

An investor is considering purchasing two stocks for a portfolio.Both stocks will have equal weighting in the portfolio.It is expected that three economic states may occur, each with equal probability of occurring.If a boom economy transpires, stock A will yield a 20% return and stock B 10%.An average economy will see a 10% and 5% returns for stocks A and B respectively.In a bust economy, stock A will have a return of -5% and stock B 1%.Given the above information, calculate the standard deviations of each stock along with the portfolio.

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Definitions:

Normal Distribution

A bell-shaped distribution curve which is symmetric about the mean, showing that data near the mean are more frequent in occurrence than data far from the mean.

Variance

A measure of the dispersion indicating how far individual numbers are from the mean.

Chi-squared Distribution

A statistical tool used to compare observed data with data we would expect to obtain according to a specific hypothesis.

Sample

A subset of individuals or units from a larger population used to estimate characteristics of the whole population.