Free CFA Institute CFA-Level-III Exam Questions

Joan Weaver, CFA and Kim McNally, CFA are analysts for Cardinal Fixed Income Management. Cardinalprovides investment advisory services to pension funds, endowments, and other institutions in the U.S. andCanada. Cardinal recommends positions in investment-grade corporate and government bonds.Cardinal has largely advocated the use of passive approaches to bond investments, where the predominantholding consists of an indexed or enhanced indexed bond portfolio. They are exploring, however, the possibilityof using a greater degree of active management to increase excess returns. The analysts have made thefollowing statements.• Weaver: "An advantage of both enhanced indexing by matching primary risk factors and enhanced indexingby minor risk factor mismatching is that there is the potential for excess returns, but the duration of the portfoliois matched with that of the index, thereby limiting the portion of tracking error resulting from interest rate risk."• McNally: "The use of active management by larger risk factor mismatches typically involves large durationmismatches from the index, in an effort to capitalize on interest rate forecasts."As part of their increased emphasis on active bond management, Cardinal has retained the services of aneconomic consultant to provide expectations input on factors such as interest rate levels, interest rate volatility,and credit spreads. During his presentation, the economist states that he believes long-term interest ratesshould fall over the next year, but that short-term rates should gradually increase. Weaver and McNally arecurrently advising an institutional client that wishes to maintain the duration of its bond portfolio at 6.7. In light ofthe economic forecast, they are considering three portfolios that combine the following three bonds in varyingamounts.Weaver and McNally next examine an investment in a semiannual coupon bond newly issued by the ManixCorporation, a firm with a credit rating of AA by Moody's. The specifics of the bond purchase are providedbelow given Weaver's projections. It is Cardinal's policy that bonds be evaluated for purchase on a total returnbasis.One of Cardinal's clients, the Johnson Investment Fund (JIF), has instructed Weaver and McNally torecommend the appropriate debt investment for $125,000,000 in funds. JIF is willing to invest an additional15% of the portfolio using leverage. JIF requires that the portfolio duration not exceed 5.5. Weaverrecommends that JIF invest in bonds with a duration of 5.2. The maximum allowable leverage will be used andthe borrowed funds will have a duration of 0.8. JIF is considering investing in bonds with options and has askedMcNally to provide insight into these investments. McNally makes the following comments:"Due to the increasing sophistication of bond issuers, the amount of bonds with put options is increasing, andthese bonds sell at a discount relative to comparable bullets. Putables are quite attractive when interest ratesrise, but, we should be careful if with them, because valuation models often fail to account for the credit risk ofthe issuer."Another client, Blair Portfolio Managers, has asked Cardinal to provide advice on duration management. Oneyear ago, their portfolio had a market value of $3,010,444 and a dollar duration of $108,000; current figures areprovided below:The expected bond equivalent yield for the Manix Bond, using total return analysis, is closest to:

Dynamic Investment Services (DIS) is a global, full-service investment advisory firm based in the United States. Although the firm provides numerous investment services, DIS specializes in portfolio management for individual and institutional clients and only deals in publicly traded debt, equity, and derivative instruments. Walter Fried, CFA, is a portfolio manager and the director of DIS's offices in Austria. For several years, Fried has maintained a relationship with a local tax consultant. The consultant provides a DIS marketing brochure with Fried's contact information to his clients seeking investment advisory services, and in return. Fried manages the consultant's personal portfolio and informs the consultant of potential tax issues in the referred clients' portfolios as they occur. Because he cannot personally manage all of the inquiring clients' assets, Fried generally passes the client information along to one of his employees but never discloses his relationship with the tax accountant. Fried recently forwarded information on the prospective Jones Family Trust account to Beverly Ulster, CFA, one of his newly hired portfolio managers. Upon receiving the information, Ulster immediately set up a meeting with Terrence Phillips, the trustee of the Jones Family Trust. Ulster began the meeting by explaining DIS's investment services as detailed in the firm's approved marketing and public relations literature. Ulster also had Phillips complete a very detailed questionnaire regarding the risk and return objectives, investment constraints, and other information related to the trust beneficiaries, which Phillips is not. While reading the questionnaire, Ulster learned that Phillips heard about DIS's services through a referral from his tax consultant. Upon further investigation, Ulster discovered the agreement set up between Fried and the tax consultant, which is legal according to Austrian law but was not disclosed by either party Ulster took a break from the meeting to get more details from Fried. With full information on the referral arrangement, Ulster immediately makes full disclosure to the Phillips. Before the meeting with Phillips concluded, Ulster began formalizing the investment policy statement (IPS) for the Jones Family Trust and agreed to Phillips' request that the IPS should explicitly forbid derivative positions in the Trust portfolio. A few hours after meeting with the Jones Family Trust representative, Ulster accepted another new referral client, Steven West, from Fried. Following DIS policy, Ulster met with West to address his investment objectives and constraints and explain the firm's services. During the meeting, Ulster informed West that DIS offers three levels of account status, each with an increasing fee based on the account's asset value. The first level has the lowest account fees but receives oversubscribed domestic IPO allocations only after the other two levels receive IPO allocations. The second-level clients have the same priority as third-level clients with respect to oversubscribed domestic IPO allocations and receive research with significantly greater detail than first-level clients. Clients who subscribe to the third level of DIS services receive the most detailed research reports and are allowed to participate in both domestic and international IPOs. All clients receive research and recommendations at approximately the same lime. West decided to engage DIS's services as a second-level client. While signing the enrollment papers, West told Ulster, "If you can give me the kind of performance I am looking for, I may move the rest of my assets to DIS." When Ulster inquired about the other accounts, West would not specify how much or what type of assets he held in other accounts. West also noted that a portion of the existing assets to be transferred to Ulster's control were private equity investments in small start-up companies, which DIS would need to manage. Ulster assured him that DIS would have no problem managing the private equity investments. After her meeting with West, Ulster attended a weekly strategy session held by DIS. All managers were required to attend this particular meeting since the focus was on a new strategy designed to reduce portfolio volatility while slightly enhancing return using a combination of futures and options on various asset classes. Intrigued by the idea, Ulster implemented the strategy for all of her clients and achieved positive results for all portfolios. Ulster's average performance results after one year of using the new strategy are presented in Figure 1. For comparative purposes, performance figures without the new strategy are also presented.At the latest strategy meeting, DIS economists were extremely pessimistic about emerging market economies and suggested that the firm's portfolio managers consider selling emerging market securities out of their portfolios and avoid these investments for the next 12 to 15 months. Fried placed a limit order to sell his personal holdings of an emerging market fund at a price 5% higher than the market price at the time. He then began selling his clients' (all of whom have discretionary accounts with DIS) holdings of the same emerging market fund using market orders. All of his clients' trade orders were completed just before the price of the fund declined sharply by 13%, causing Fried's order to remain unfilled. Does the referral agreement between Fried and the tax consultant violate any CFA Institute Standards of Professional Conduct?

Eugene Price, CFA, a portfolio manager for the American Universal Fund (AUF), has been directed to pursue acontingent immunization strategy for a portfolio with a current market value of $100 million. AUF's trustees arenot willing to accept a rate of return less than 6% over the next five years. The trustees have also stated thatthey believe an immunization rate of 8% is attainable in today's market. Price has decided to implement thisstrategy by initially purchasing $100 million in 10-year bonds with an annual coupon rate of 8.0%, paidsemiannually.Price forecasts that the prevailing immunization rate and market rate for the bonds will both rise from 8% to 9%in one year.While Price is conducting his immunization strategy he is approached by April Banks, a newly hired junioranalyst at AUF. Banks is wondering what steps need to be taken to immunize a portfolio with multiple liabilities.Price states that the concept of single liability immunization can fortunately be extended to address the issue ofimmunizing a portfolio with multiple liabilities. He further states that there are two methods for managingmultiple liabilities. The first method is cash flow matching which involves finding a bond with a maturity dateequal to the liability payment date, buying enough in par value of that bond so that the principal and final couponfully fund the last liability, and continuing this process until all liabilities are matched. The second method ishorizon matching which ensures that the assets and liabilities have the same present values and durations.Price warns Banks about the dangers of immunization risk. He states that it is impossible to have a portfoliowith zero immunization risk, because reinvestment risk will always be present. Price tells Banks, "Be cognizantof the dispersion of cash flows when conducting an immunization strategy. When there is a high dispersion ofcash flows about the horizon date, immunization risk is high. It is better to have cash flows concentrated aroundthe investment horizon, since immunization risk is reduced."Assuming an immediate (today) increase in the immunized rate to 11%, the portfolio required return that wouldmost likely make Price turn to an immunization strategy is closest to:

Paul Dennon is senior manager at Apple Markets Associates, an investment advisory firm. Dennon has beenexamining portfolio risk using traditional methods such as the portfolio variance and beta. He has rankedportfolios from least risky to most risky using traditional methods.Recently, Dennon has become more interested in employing value at risk (VAR) to determine the amount ofmoney clients could potentially lose under various scenarios. To examine VAR, Paul selects a fund run solelyfor Apple's largest client, the Jude Fund. The client has $100 million invested in the portfolio. Using thevariance-covariance method, the mean return on the portfolio is expected to be 10% and the standard deviationis expected to be 10%. Over the past 100 days, daily losses to the Jude Fund on its 10 worst days were (inmillions): 20, 18, 16, 15, 12, 11, 10, 9, 6, and 5. Dennon also ran a Monte Carlo simulation (over 10,000scenarios). The following table provides the results of the simulation:Figure 1: Monte Carlo Simulation DataThe top row (Percentile) of the table reports the percentage of simulations that had returns below thosereported in the second row (Return). For example, 95% of the simulations provided a return of 15% or less, and97.5% of the simulations provided a return of 20% or less.Dennon's supervisor, Peggy Lane, has become concerned that Dennon's use of VAR in his portfoliomanagement practice is inappropriate and has called for a meeting with him. Lane begins by asking Dennon tojustify his use of VAR methodology and explain why the estimated VAR varies depending on the method usedto calculate it. Dennon presents Lane with the following table detailing VAR estimates for another Apple client,the York Pension Plan.To round out the analytical process. Lane suggests that Dennon also incorporate a system for evaluatingportfolio performance. Dennon agrees to the suggestion and computes several performance ratios on the YorkPension Plan portfolio to discuss with Lane. The performance figures are included in the following table. Notethat the minimum acceptable return is the risk-free rate.Figure 3: Performance Ratios for the York Pension PlanUsing the historical data over the past 100 days, the 1-day, 5% VAR for the Jude Fund is closest to:

Joan Nicholson, CFA, and Kim Fluellen, CFA, sit on the risk management committee for Thomasville AssetManagement. Although Thomasville manages the majority of its investable assets, it also utilizes outside firmsfor special situations such as market neutral and convertible arbitrage strategies. Thomasville has hired ahedge fund, Boston Advisors, for both of these strategies. The managers for the Boston Advisors funds areFrank Amato, CFA, and Joseph Garvin, CFA. Amato uses a market neutral strategy and has generated a returnof S20 million this year on the $100 million Thomasville has invested with him. Garvin uses a convertiblearbitrage strategy and has lost $15 million this year on the $200 million Thomasville has invested with him, withmost of the loss coming in the last quarter of the year. Thomasville pays each outside manager an incentive feeof 20% on profits. During the risk management committee meeting Nicholson evaluates the characteristics ofthe arrangement with Boston Advisors. Nicholson states that the asymmetric nature of Thomasville's contractwith Boston Advisors creates adverse consequences for Thomasville's net profits and that the compensationcontract resembles a put option owned by Boston Advisors.Upon request, Fluellen provides a risk assessment for the firm's large cap growth portfolio using a monthlydollar VAR. To do so, Fluellen obtains the following statistics from the fund manager. The value of the fund is$80 million and has an annual expected return of 14.4%. The annual standard deviation of returns is 21.50%.Assuming a standard normal distribution, 5% of the potential portfolio values are 1.65 standard deviationsbelow the expected return.Thomasville periodically engages in options trading for hedging purposes or when they believe that options aremispriced. One of their positions is a long position in a call option for Moffett Corporation. The option is aEuropean option with a 3-month maturity. The underlying stock price is $27 and the strike price of the option is$25. The option sells for S2.86. Thomasville has also sold a put on the stock of the McNeill Corporation. Theoption is an American option with a 2-month maturity. The underlying stock price is $52 and the strike price ofthe option is $55. The option sells for $3.82. Fluellen assesses the credit risk of these options to Thomasvilleand states that the current credit risk of the Moffett option is $2.86 and the current credit risk of the McNeilloption is $3.82.Thomasville also uses options quite heavily in their Special Strategies Portfolio. This portfolio seeks to exploitmispriced assets using the leverage provided by options contracts. Although this fund has achieved somespectacular returns, it has also produced some rather large losses on days of high market volatility. Nicholsonhas calculated a 5% VAR for the fund at $13.9 million. In most years, the fund has produced losses exceeding$13.9 million in 13 of the 250 trading days in a year, on average. Nicholson is concerned about the accuracy ofthe estimated VAR because when the losses exceed $13.9 million, they are typically much greater than $13.9million.In addition to using options, Thomasville also uses swap contracts for hedging interest rate risk and currencyexposures. Fluellen has been assigned the task of evaluating the credit risk of these contracts. Thecharacteristics of the swap contracts Thomasville uses are shown in Figure 1.Fluellen later is asked to describe credit risk in general to the risk management committee. She states thatcross-default provisions generally protect a creditor because they prevent a debtor from declaring immediatedefault on the obligation owed to the creditor when the debtor defaults on other obligations. Fluellen also statesthat credit risk and credit VAR can be quickly calculated because bond rating firms provide extensive data onthe defaults for investment grade and junk grade corporate debt at reasonable prices.Which of the following best describes the accuracy of the VAR measure calculated for the Special StrategiesPortfolio?