Security Analysis And Portfolio Management: An Analysis Of Tesla, Amazon And BHP Billiton

Mean Returns and Analyses of Individual Stocks

Discuss about the Security Analysis and Portfolio Management.

It is always advisable to an investor to invest in a basket of stocks rather than putting all money in one stock. Hence, an investor should formulate a portfolio with securities having different risk and return characteristics. With this, the investor gets advantages of risk diversification. The risk of investment gets diluted and return gets optimized (Baker and English, 2011). In this context, a report has been prepared here that presented an analysis of three stocks namely Tesla, Amazon, and BHP Billiton listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The report covers analysis of risk and return characteristics of these stocks along with a portfolio being formed with equal weights of all three stocks. The report explains the different between the risk and return of individual stocks and that of a portfolio. The findings lead to conclusion as to how should an investor optimize the risk and return of his investments.   

The average return in relation to stocks and the market index taking weekly prices over the period of past 28 weeks has been calculated. Apart from this variance of stock returns and market index returns, co-variance between stocks and with market index and co-efficient of correlation between stocks and with market index have also been computed. The summary of results is shown below:

From the figures presented above, it could be observed that arithmetic and geometric means of returns of stocks are showing negative weekly returns over the period except Amazon. However, the market index as a whole is earning positive return of 0.19%. This signifies that the overall market in USA has performed good enough to generate positive returns for the investors but the stocks taken individually have generated losses.

Recent downfall in the Tesla’s stock has been observed due to mainly due to crash of fatal car model X and the company has also been slow in production of another model namely model 3. Tesla’s stock went down by 22.4% in March 2018 which is a record low (AutumnEII, 2018)..

However, Amazon has earned a weekly return of 1.37%. The company is growing rapidly and latest merger deal with India’s one of the biggest retailers Flipkart has caused upward movements in the price of Amazon’s stock (Economictimes, 2018). In regards to BHP Billiton, it has been observed that the company is facing industry wide downfall all over the world. The reduction in demand of coal and Iron ore has caused the company to lose its share prices.

Formation of Portfolio and Comparison with Individual Stocks

In this part, the return and risk of portfolio formulated with equal weights of all three stocks and the return and risk of individual stocks has been compared based on data presented below:

It could be observed that Amazon is the only stock in the portfolio which is earning positive returns for the investors. Thus, if results are seen taking stocks individually, the positive return earned on Amazon is wiped out by the losses incurred on Tesla and BHP Billiton. But same is not the case when a portfolio of these stocks is formed and investment is made in the portfolio. The portfolio return is 0.0571% with risk (variance) of 0.0057%. It could be observed that the variance is reduced significantly with the formation of portfolio to 0.0057% which is due to negative covariance between the returns of stocks pairs of Tesla and BHP and BHP and Amazon.

The beta of Tesla, Amazon, and BHP Billiton has been found to be 0.6989, 1.0287, and -0.1936. The beta values of stocks indicate the degree of systematic risk of stocks. Further, it also implies the degree of volatility of stock relative to market index (Pandya, 2013). It could be observed that the Tesla and Amazon moves in tandem with market as these stocks have positive beta values, however, the stock of BHP Billiton having negative beta behaves inverse. Further, observed that Amazon is a high beta stock as compared to other two stocks. Thus, systematic risk in case of Amazon is higher as compared to other two stocks.

The unsystematic risk is the residue of the total risk after deducting systematic risk from it. The unsystematic risk represents company specific risk which can be reduced or diversified through formation of portfolio (Chance and Brooks, 2015). The results show that in case of Tesla and Amazon, the total risk is driven by the systematic risk factors and hence unsystematic risk is negligible. However, in case of BHP Billiton, the unsystematic risk is 4.40%.

Further, in order to assess the performance of portfolio and stocks, Jensen’s alpha has been calculated. The Jensen’s alpha represents excess return earned by the stock or portfolio over the risk free rate of return. The results show that the Jensen’s alpha is 0.1138%, 0.1675%, and -0.0315% for Tesla, Amazon, and BHP Billiton respectively. It could be observed that Jensen’s alpha is highest in case of Amazon which depicts the stock has performed better than other two stocks. Further, Jensen’s alpha in case of portfolio has been found to be 0.0824% which indicates optimum performance of the portfolio.    

Security Characteristic Line and Jensen’s Alpha

The analysis of risk and return carried on the stocks of Tesla, Amazon, and BHP Billiton, and the equally weighted portfolio of these stocks gives a meaningful insight into the performance. The analysis revealed the average return earned on the stocks over the period of time which could form a solid basis to predict the future movement in the stock’s prices. Further, the analysis of variance revealed the risk or volatility of the returns which is one of the primary concerns of an investor. The covariance and coefficient of correlation were calculated which show relationship between the returns of stocks. The identification of this relationship is essential to form a perfect portfolio that can generate optimum returns with minimum risk (Kevin, 2015). Further, total risk has been analyzed in detail bifurcating into systematic and unsystematic risk components. This bifurcation is also necessary to form a portfolio which diversifies the risk adequately. Hence, overall, the analysis conducted in relation to risk and return of the stock and portfolio in this report is quite useful for an investor seeking to invest his money.

However, there are certain limitations of this analysis such as it does not consider the future aspect of the performance. It is entirely based on the analysis of historical data. Further, there are other indicator of risk and return apart from variance, arithmetic mean, and geometric mean which have not been considered in this analysis (Kevin, 2015). For example, an investor could consider reputation of company in the market, the composition of its board of directors could also reveal meaningful insight into capacity of a stock.      

Further analysis of financial statements could be conducted to get insight into the state of affairs of the company. Apart from this, it would also be necessary for the investor to analyze the future prospects by review future plans of the companies.

References

AutumnEII, K. 2018. Tesla’s stock is falling for two reasons: UBS analyst. Accessed May 12, 2018 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/02/tesla-stocks-plunge-for-two-reasons-ubs-analyst.html

Economictimes. 2018. Flipkart-Amazon combine may face close scrutiny for competition aspects. Accessed May 12, 2018 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/flipkart-amazon-combine-may-face-close-scrutiny-for-competition-aspects/articleshow/63665561.cms

Baker, K.H. and English, P. 2011. Capital Budgeting Valuation: Financial Analysis for Today’s Investment Projects. John Wiley & Sons.

Pandya, F.H. 2013. Security Analysis and Portfolio Management. Jaico Publishing House.

Chance, D.M. and Brooks, R. 2015. Introduction to Derivatives and Risk Management. Cengage Learning.

Kevin, S. 2015. Security Analysis And Portfolio Management. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.

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