Assume that a U.S. investor can invest in two asset classes: Domestic and Foreign Bonds. The data in the following table are risk and return data calculated in
U.S. Dollar terms. Given this data, which of the following choices is most likely the correct risk/return combination for a portfolio weighted 50 percent in domestic bonds and 50 percent in foreign bonds?
Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer
A. B. C. D.C
According to portfolio theory and the principle of diversification, we would expect that adding more of a security that has a low correlation to an existing portfolio would lower the portfolio risk. Since the correlation between foreign and domestic bonds is low at 0.50, we would expect the risk of the portfolio to decline below
8.00% when we replace domestic bonds with foreign bonds. This narrows the possible correct responses to the two with risk less than 8.00%. In addition, we would expect the return to increase, as the return on foreign bonds is higher than that on domestic bonds, butremain slightly lower than that for the portfolio that is
20% domestic and 80% foreign. We can calculate the estimated portfolio return as the weighted average of returns for the individual asset classes. (0.50 * 12) +
(0.50 * 6.5) = 9.25%