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ACCA December Exams

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  1. Hi Tutor, I’m not clear on Example 4. To get the beta, the systematic risk is divided by risk-free rate. So, that means Rf is the market risk? And the market return of 12% is not the market risk? Thank you.

    • You are confusing return with risk – they are two different things.

      The beta is the systematic risk of the investment divided by the market risk (not the risk free rate).

      You are told in the question (I assume you have printed out the free lecture notes) that the market risk is 4%.

  3. Hello Prof! The lecture was wonderfully delivered and the explanations the simplest i have ever come across…so great many thanks for that. I however, could not find any explantion or the question regarding covariance in the latest course notes. Will it be right of me to assume they weren’t included cause the topic isn’t of significance?

  4. hi sir,
    overall the lecture was wonderfull and clearly explained every thing but sir in example 7 how are we getting 2.1 times beta shouldn’t we rearrange the standard deviation formula of square root variance to get the the variance and then put it back in beta formula of Co variance/ variance?
    Thanks

    • As I say in the next lecture, it is extremely unlikely that the current examiner would expect you to know the formula for the coefficient of correlation and therefore there is not really any need to worry about example 7.

      However, the formula for the coefficient of correlation is that it is the covariance of the investment with the market divided by (SD investment x SD market).
      So rearranging the equation gives covariance = coefficient of correlation multiplied by the two standard deviations.

      Therefore beta = covariance / variance of mkt = coefficient of correlation x SD mkt x SD inv / variance mkt
      If you divide top and bottom by the SD of the market, beta = coefficient of correlation x SD Inv / SD mkt.

      However, again, I really would not worry about this for the current examiner.

      • thank you.great.You know here in South Africa we are also doing,SAICA(South African Institute of Charted Accountant) and ACCA,Management Accounting and Finance is one of the challenging subject nationally,but you have mae it easier.Please make the lecture short,so that you can not do long talking as well,and it will be short,they are long,but very very very helpful.Long life.I think you are old,if by the way you pass away,eish, loss,is the a plan B for the site(sad),for future generations?.God bless you.

    • Please post this sort of question in the Ask the Tutor Forum, and not as a comment on a lecture about something different!

      There are no lectures on mergers and acquisitions because they do not involve any technical work that is not already covered in other lectures – it is approach rather then learning new techniques.

      So instead I am making recordings going through some past merger and acquisition questions. One has already been uploaded – question 1 from the December 2014 exam.

      • hi Sir,

        where can I find the recording which you mentioned above relating to the December Q1?

        Rgs

      • Go to the main P4 page, and then click on the link “Updated. ACCA P4 Revision” (near the top of the page)

        There are now 3 recent Question 1’s uploaded.

  7. Hello John!

    As I understood, in Example 7 we assume that there is no unsystematic risk so the total risk equals systematic risk (well-diversified portfolio). Why do we use correlation coefficient if the systematic risk is already given? Or maybe when we are given the correlation coefficient, which takes into account market imperfections, the assumption is not applicable and we adjust both the beta (12/4 * 0.7) and standard deviation (12 * 0.7) by the correlation coefficient, right?

    • There is unsystematic risk in example 7 – the total risk is 12% but not all of this is systematic risk.

      The coefficient of correlation = covariance of inv with mkt / (std devn (inv) x std devn mkt)

      Beta = covariance of inv with mkt / (std devn mkt)^2

      So…..beta = coeff of correlation x (std devn inv / std devn mkt)

      (Std devn of inv in all the lines above is the total std devn of the investment – i.e. the measure of total risk in the investment)

      The rest of the answer follows from there.

  9. I must admit though that i find it more interesting when the tutor takes you through the question answering, its as if you are in a visual class. Trully appreciated. keep up the good work.

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