Essay Question 5 (worth 9 points) Issuer: Delta Industrial HoldingsRating: AAA (Fitch)Maturity: 15 years (due September 1, 2039)Coupon: 4.5% fixed, paid semiannuallyYield to Maturity: 5.2%Issue Price: 110.00Call Feature: None (option-free)Put Feature: NoneEmbedded Options: NoneStated Duration: 22 yearsBenchmark Treasury: 3.5% (10-year maturity reference) A bond salesperson tells you the following: Comparable AAA-rated bonds are trading at a spread of 50 basis points over the Treasury benchmark. Identify at least three objective errors or inconsistencies in this bond offering and explain why they would concern a professional investor.

In the Fama-French three-factor model, the “HML” factor captures:

The Carhart four-factor model adds which factor to the Fama-French three-factor model?

Passive investing generally offers:

In Brinson attribution, the “allocation effect” measures:

Which is considered an implicit transaction cost?

Essay You are a newly hired junior portfolio manager, fresh out of graduate school with a specialization in finance. Minutes before a scheduled review, you learn the lead portfolio manager has been called away unexpectedly. You must conduct the meeting alone. During the session, the client studies the efficient-frontier chart that was prepared for the discussion. The client asks you the following: “On those efficient-frontier charts, what’s the difference between the global minimum-variance (GMV) portfolio and the portfolio that maximizes the Sharpe ratio, and why wouldn’t we always choose the Sharpe-maximizing one?” What is your response to the client?

Passive strategies tend to outperform active strategies most reliably when:

The primary purpose of using an equity index future in a portfolio is to:

Which of the following is NOT typically considered a factor in equity investing?