Question

A pension fund manager is considering three mutual funds. The first is a stock fund, the second is a long-term government and corporate bond fund, and the third is a T-bill money market fund that yields a rate of 9%. The probability distribution of the risky funds is as follows:

Expected Return Standard Deviation

Stock fund (S) 17 % 38 %

Bond fund (B) 13 18

The correlation between the fund returns is 0.12.

Solve numerically for the proportions of each asset and for the expected return and standard deviation of the optimal risky portfolio. (Do not round intermediate calculations. Enter your answers as decimals rounded to 4 places.)

Portfolio invested in the stock:

Portfolio invested in the bond:

Expected return:

Standard deviation:

Answer 1

Cov(b,s) = Correlation*SD_s*SD_b = 0.12*38*18 = 82.08 %²

The proportion of stocks in the optimal risky portfolio is given by:

W_s = 0.3066

W_b = 1 - 0.3066 = 0.6934

The expected return is given by:

E(r_p) = 0.3066*17 + 0.6934*13 = 14.23%

The standard deviation is given by:

Standard deviation = 18.07%