Sunday, June 17, 2007

Topic of the Week - Capital Asset Pricing Model

The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is used in finance to determine a theoretically appropriate required rate of return (and thus the price if expected cash flows can be estimated) of an asset, if that asset is to be added to an already well-diversified portfolio, given that asset's non-diversifiable risk. The CAPM formula takes into account the asset's sensitivity to non-diversifiable risk (also known as systematic risk or market risk), in a number often referred to as beta (β) in the financial industry, as well as the expected return of the market and the expected return of a theoretical risk-free asset.

The model was introduced by Jack Treynor, William Sharpe, John Lintner and Jan Mossin independently, building on the earlier work of Harry Markowitz on diversification and modern portfolio theory. Sharpe received the Nobel Prize in Economics (jointly with Harry Markowitz and Merton Miller) for this contribution to the field of financial economics.

The formula

The CAPM is a model for pricing an individual security (asset) or a portfolio. For individual security perspective, we made use of the security market line (SML) and its relation to expected return and systematic risk (beta) to show how the market must price individual securities in relation to their security risk class. The SML enables us to calculate the reward-to-risk ratio for any security in relation to that of the overall market. Therefore, when the expected rate of return for any security is deflated by its beta coefficient, the reward-to-risk ratio for any individual security in the market is equal to the market reward-to-risk ratio, thus:

   

\frac {E(R_i)- R_f}{\beta_{im}}  = E(R_m) - R_f,

The market reward-to-risk ratio is effectively the market risk premium and by rearranging the above equation and solving for E(Ri), we obtain the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM).

E(R_i) = R_f + \beta_{im}(E(R_m) - R_f).\,

Where:

  • E(R_i)~~ is the expected return on the capital asset
  • R_f~ is the risk-free rate of return
  • \beta_{im}~~ (the beta coefficient) the sensitivity of the asset returns to market returns, or also \beta_{im} = \frac {\mathrm{Cov}(R_i,R_m)}{\mathrm{Var}(R_m)},
  • E(R_m)~ is the expected return of the market
  • E(R_m)-R_f~ is sometimes known as the market premium or risk premium (the difference between the expected market rate of return and the risk-free rate of return). Note 1: the expected market rate of return is usually measured by looking at the arithmetic average of the historical returns on a market portfolio (i.e. S&P 500). Note 2: the risk free rate of return used for determining the risk premium is usually the arithmetic average of historical risk free rates of return and not the current risk free rate of return.

No comments: