Download M487 A1 S4 2024

M487 Portfolio and Fund Management
Session Four 2024
Assignment One
Question 1:
Describe and discuss bonds as financial instruments.
[70 marks]
Question 2:
Critically assess the importance of the normality assumption in
portfolio theory.
[30 marks]
Explain and illustrate your answer in no more than 2,500 words. This limit
includes tables and captions but excludes footnotes, endnotes, tables of figures and
references. Answers that exceed this limit will result in a loss of marks. Full
details of penalties for late submission, exceeding the word limit and other
information can be found at the end of this assignment.
Your assignment should be submitted via the Bloomsbury Learning Environment
(BLE) to The Centre for Financial and Management Studies no later than 23rd July
2024. Full instructions are available on the BLE.
Student Assignment Guidelines
You will need to plan your answer carefully to provide a focused and succinct essay
whatever your approach and reasoning ability within the word-limit.
In your assignment, you should also demonstrate your ability to explain and apply the
concepts, theories or models and to justify any conclusion you may reach on the basis
of evidence provided by all relevant course materials or any other properly referenced
source you may choose to use. The assignment answers should be written in an
academic and logical manner, not a journalistic style.
Question 1:
The question requires you to focus primarily on concepts and theories developed in
Unit 1 and Chapter 2 of Bodie et al. (2014). Related information is also presented in
Unit 4. You need to describe and discuss the investment characteristics of bonds. You
need to discuss the benefits/utility for investors and corporations and describe their
reward/risk profile. You might want to accompany your analysis with examples,
graphs and/or empirical evidence from the literature.
Question 2:
The question requires you to focus primarily on concepts and theories developed in
Unit 4. You need to discuss the properties of the normal distribution and its merits in
portfolio theory. You should also evaluate the evidence that security returns are nonnormally distributed and critically assess the implications.
As Question 2 is based on material in Unit 4 which is studied towards the end
of the first half of the course, you will need to plan your work carefully in
order to be able to submit your assignment by the deadline.
M487 Portfolio and Fund Management
Session Four 2024
Your assignment must be properly referenced. Further information on referencing
(ie the Harvard system) is available in Studying at a Distance by Talbot on the BLE.
Plagiarism
All assignments submitted must be your own work and written in your own words.
Where you have used quoted material, you must make full reference to it. You must
cite all references used throughout your work at the end of your assignment. Advice
on what is classified as plagiarism and the action taken against this can be found on
the SOAS website and on the BLE.
Submitting Assignments
Students are required to submit their assignment in one place only on the BLE using
TurnItIn, the plagiarism detection software. Instructions on how to do this can be
found on the BLE on your module assignment page.
Please see the information below for the current policy on penalties.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
Details about the penalties for late submission, word count and overlength
assignments plus Academic Misconduct are available on the Bloomsbury Learning
Environment (BLE). The penalties will differ for students registered before
September 2023 and after September 2023. Please ensure you refer to the correct
documentation on the BLE (details will be available shortly).