Essay On Capital Asset Pricing Model

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Introduction Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is an ex ante concept, which is built on the portfolio theory established by Markowitz (Bhatnagar and Ramlogan 2012). It enhances the understanding of elements of asset prices, specifically the linear relationship between risk and expected return (Perold 2004). The direct correlation between risk and return is well defined by the security market line (SML), where market risk of an asset is associated with the return and risk of the market along with the risk free rate to estimate expected return on an asset (Watson and Head 1998 cited in Laubscher 2002). From my perspective, the usefulness of CAPM is directed towards efficient investment decision making and strategic management. Moosa (2013) remarks CAPM to be a supportive model in ‘evaluating the performance of managed portfolios and for investment purposes’. Assumptions underlying Sharpe and Lintner’s CAPM: 1. ‘All investors have identical expectations about security rewards and risks 2. There are no investment constraints 3. There is a unique risk free borrowing and lending interest rate 4. All investors want to maximise mean variance utility functions 5. Investors are risk averse 6. There are perfect market conditions; no transaction costs, no taxes’ (Da, Guo and Jagannathan 2012). The following essay will expand on the usefulness and flaws of CAPM and other asset evaluation frameworks and in the end showing that despite all the evidence against CAPM it is still a useful model for determining asset investments. CAPM is a useful model According to Perold (2004), ‘CAPM can be served as a benchmark for understanding the capital market phenomena that cause asset prices and investor behavior to deviate from the prescript... ... middle of paper ... ...factor models (Bhatnagar and Ramlogan 2012). The two models APT and CAPM should not be seen as alternatives because CAPM attempts to describe the underlying relationships of the market, as opposed to APT, which provides an explanation of current market conditions (Laubscher 2002). Such testing assessments will increase the understanding of risk and return relationship and stock markets pricing instruments. Although the Fama and French three-factor model operates slightly better than CAPM, it does not indicate that CAPM is impractical to use (Hibbert and Lawrence 2010). Finally, Welch (2008) established from his research that 75% of finance academics recommend using the CAPM for commercial capital budgeting purposes, 10% commend the Fama French model and only 5% recommend an APT model. Therefore, Sharpe and Lintner’s CAPM is a beneficial framework.

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