Frame the issue. Discuss the advantages and limitations of optimal portfolio allocation. HMC defined their Policy Portfolio to correspond to their benchmark‚ according to the modern portfolio theory (Markowitz‚ 1952)‚ whose goal is to minimize the variance for a given return. The main advantage of the optimal portfolio allocation lies in its ability to provide weights on how to invest a given amount of money based on a few inputs. Optimal portfolio allocation is easy to implement‚ yet it faces
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Basic: 1. Why does Harvard spend so many resources managing its endowment? Why not simply invest in Treasury Bonds and be done? 2. Why this emphasis on real returns as opposed to nominal returns? 3.How does HMC form its capital market assumptions? Why don’t they use past statistics to project the future? What do HMC’s capital market assumptions imply about the forward looking domestic equity premium? How does it compare to the historical equity premium? 4.If cash has zero standard deviation
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1 – The HMC aim is to keep the purchasing power of its endowment and achieve growth on the long run. The advantage of the optimal portfolio allocation is that it allows the investors to explore multiple portfolios (those lying on the efficient frontier) given their risk-return preferences. This may be an optimal solution for the average investor but imposes challenges for big institutional investors such as HMC. HMC long-term horizon allows the introduction of less liquid and riskier investments
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The Harvard Management Company and Inflation Protected Bonds Executive Summary The Harvard Management Company (HMC) was established in 1974 with the goals providing world-class investment management focused solely on generating strong results to support the educational and research objectives of Harvard University. The company’s goals are to correctly measure Harvard University’s financial requirements and to provide investment opportunities that will accurately meet or exceed them with the
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The Harvard Management Company (2001) Case You will design an excel spreadsheet that allows you to answer the following questions: i) Given figures in Exhibits 4 and 11 what is the expected return and volatility of the policy portfolio? ii) Find an efficient portfolio having the same expected return as the policy portfolio but lower volatility. iii) Find an efficient portfolio having the same volatility as the policy portfolio but higher expected return. iv) Repeat question ii
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The Harvard Management Company and Inflation-Protected Bonds 1(a) Regular Treasury bonds are purchased at face value in the beginning or an adjusted price prior maturity. And in every period‚ normally annul or semiannual‚ investor will receive a coupon as an interest and at the maturity a principal plus coupon. (b) Coupon and principal of the Regular Treasury bonds are fixed‚ therefore if the inflation rate increases in the forecasting future‚ investor will receive the same amount of coupon
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1. What is the size of HMC’s portfolio? How is the portfolio managed and what are the management costs? What is the role of the Policy Portfolio? The size of HMC’s portfolio 2. Why is HMC focusing on real returns? 3. HMC’s estimates of expected returns‚ standard deviations and correlations di_er from the twenty-year historical estimates. Why might this be? Comment on the di_er- ence between the two sets of estimates‚ focusing on expected returns and standard deviations. 4. Let’s assume
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Business and strategy Hampton Machine Tool Company (HMTC) is established in 1915‚ specialized in manufacturing tools for the automobile and the aircraft manufacturer. HMTC business has been extremely successful in the mid and late 60s. But in the mid-1970s‚ HTMC’s business had been considerably affected by the Arab oil embargo and ending of Vietnam War‚ which had turn down the automobile and aircraft industry. However‚ HMTC has survived through this hard time and its market share increased due
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THE HARVARD MANAGEMENT COMPANY AND INFLATION PROTECTED BONDS Be Sure to Include the Following in Your Analysis: 1. How do regular (nominal) Treasury bonds work? How does inflation impact the coupons and principal of a regular T-Bond? How are TIPS different from regular Treasury bonds? When do TIPS outperform/underperform regular Treasuries? 2. What effect do you think an increase in real interest rates has on the price of TIPS? And an increase in realized inflation? An increase in expected
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• What do HMC’s capital assumptions imply about the optimal allocation to TIPs and other asset classes in a mean-variance framework? Should Harvard invest its endowment in TIPs? Let us look at some theoretical concepts first : The mean variance framework‚ determines the optimal allocation to different asset classes that minimizes portfolio return variance. This is done by plotting allocations to the various asset classes across two axes representing risk and return. When the CAPM assumptions hold
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