Portfolio Management (Section II.B) (11%, 14 Questions) Flashcards
(39 cards)
Asset Location - Taxable Account
-Index and other passive funds
-Growth funds with low turnover
-tax-managed funds
-REITS
-Muni’s
Asset Location - Tax-Deferred Accounts
-Dividend Stocks
-Most taxable bonds
-Actively managed funds, high turnover funds
-Partnerhips “IF” they avoid UBTI.
Pair-wise Trades
Sell asset at a loss (to harvest tax loss) and buy a comparable, but not identical, asset to maintain risk exposure while avoiding wash sale rules.
Portfolio Turnover Rate
- A Simple measure of potential taxation, but not usually the best measure of tax efficiency.
- Measures how often assets or investments in a fund or portfolio are bought and/or sold within a specific time period.
- Calculated by dividing the net assets or invsts bought and sold by the portfolio value.
Capital Gains Realization Rate
- The percentage of the fund’s net unrealized capital gains that the manager chose to realize.
- CGRR = CGDIST/GAINSTOCK
Relative Wealth Measure
*The higher the better, zero indicates little tax impact
RWM = [(R(at)-R(bt))/(1+R(bt)) x 1,000
- RWM works in all kinds of markets
- RWM is usually negative but can be positive if realized losses and/or applicable deferred losses are included.
Consultant Capture Ratio
- Captures the % of return that taxable investors retain.
CCR = after-tax return / before-tax return
- Works well in smooth, upward-trending markets.
Accountants Ratio
- Equals the ratio of short-term capital gains realized to total capital gains realized.
Alternative Investments - Benefits and Risks
- Potential Benefits = diversification, hedging, performance, innovation, leverage, etc.
- Risks/Disadvantages = Lock-up periods, high fees, taxes, lack of tranparency, reporting standards, less regulation, risk of total loss, leverage, volatility, illiquidity.
Contango & Backwardation
*If asked about this on the test, the information below should be all we need to know.
- Backwardation is desirable for investors who are “net long”
- Backwardation occurs when futures prices are lower than spot prices.
- Backwardation indicates short supply
- Contango occurs when futures prices are higher than spot prices.
- Contango indicates immediate supply.
The J-Curve Concept
The “j-curve” concept relates to the expectation that for some investments, such as priate equity, there are negatives cash flows for several years before leading to positive cash flows in later years.
“Vintage Year” Concept
- Vintage year refers to the first (initial) year of investment.
- Analysis is common for venture capital projects and other private equity investments as well as real estate.
Master Limited Partnerships “MLPs”
- Type of limited partnership that is traded on a public exchange. LPs typically provide the investments and general partners typically manage operations.
- Requirements that 90% of cash flow comes from the real estate, commodities, or natural resources.
- Many MLPs are not appropriate for tax-deferred accounts because of UBTI and other tax related issues.
Hedge Fund Performance - Backfill bias
- Hedge funds report returns only if they choose to, and they may do so only when their prior performance is good.
Hedge Fund Performance - Survivorship bias
- Failed funds drop out of the database
- Hedge fund attrition rates are more than double those for mutual funds.
Hedge Fund Performance - High water mark
- The fee structure can give incentives to shut down a poorly performance fund
- If a fund experiences losses, it may not be able to charge an incentive unless it recovers to its previous higher value.
UBTI - Unrelated Business Taxable Income
- Can create current tax liability for tax-deferred accounts due to gains realized from investments activities such as leveraged trading strategies and other gain producing activities not considered directly related to the main function of the entitiy. Subject to federal and state income tax.
Mean-Variance Optimization (MVO)
- The process or method that measures the efficiency of various mixes of assets or invstments that seeks the optimal combination of choices through diversification that minimizes risk per unit of return gained.
- Advantage = Helps quantify risk and return to build optimal portfolios.
- Disadvantage = Assumes investors are rational; assumes history of risk and return characteristics are resonable predictors of future performance.
Strategic Asset Allocation
- Involves crafting a portfolio of various asset classes with specific target mixes. The objective of strategic allocation is to maintain these mixes.
Tatical Asset Allocation
- It is an active management strategy
- Allows the advisor to make changes to a portfolio allocation based on their convictions about various asset classes looking forward.
Dynamic Asset Allocation
- A method of changing the allocation of the portolio based on market conditions.
- One approach to DAA is when the riskier part of a portfolio outperforms the safer part, the investor or the advisor would assume more risk by increasing the allocation to the riskier part of the portfolio.
Options Strategies - Collar
- Options-based hedge that involves selling an out of the money call and buying an out of the money put.
Option Strategies - Horizontal Spread
- A spread where the investor buy and sells two options on the same underlying asset that the same strike but different expiration dates.
- Also called “Calendar Spread”.
Arithmetic Mean
- Mean calculation by adding together the different stock prices and then dividing by the number of stocks.
- Arithmetic Mean = ($10+$20)/2 = $15