...Bill Value Trust is a mutual fund that has performed well against various indexes in the years leading up to 2005. Value Trust takes S&P 500 as its benchmark index, which it has outperformed for the last 14 years. Prior to 2005, Value Trust had an average annual total return of 14.6%, which was 3.67% higher than S&P 500’s average annual returns. From exhibits 1 and 5 we can see that the return was much higher for Value Trust (15.04%) compared to the S&P 500 (9.48%) over a ten year period. The NAV was consistently increasing from 1994 to 2000 up until the market crash when the NAV decreased but then again increased consistently until 2004. The NAV is an investment measure and increase indicates a better performance. Also from exhibit 1 we can see that the annual return of Value Trust was higher than the S&P 500’s over the years. According to the case Value Trust uses S&P 500 however we should make some analysis on what kind of shares S&P 500 deals with versus what kind of shares Value Trust deals with. S&P comprises of 500 widely held common stocks in other words large cap stocks. On the other hand 50% of Value Trust’s assets were of only 10 large cap companies and Value Trust was open for investing in growth companies. This made the beta of Value Trust (1.31 as taken from Exhibit 1) higher than S&P’s beta indicating that Value Trust is riskier. In this case to make the benchmark more comparable to Value Trust we chose to use other benchmarks, such as the S&P 400 mid-cap....
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...The purpose of this paper is to give a peer review of the presentation team’s performance. The topic covered by the team was the role of financial market efficiency in corporate finance and its relevance to fund manager Bill Miller, Value Trust, and potential investors. We will look at the following areas in assessing the performance of the presentation team: ■ The value of supplemental readings ■ Quality and content of the concept lecture ■ Quality of the case analysis ■ Strength of the case recommendation ■ Presentation and communication skill Value of Supplement Readings The analysis team recommended the following additional readings: Chapter 8 of Brigham/Ehrhardt’s “Financial Management” textbook, Burton Malkiel’s “Reflections of the Efficient Market Hypothesis: 30 Years Later”, and Malkiel’s “Passive Investment Strategies and Efficient Markets”. All three recommendations are excellent sources for basic and advanced understanding of the case’s key financial concepts. “EMH: 30 Years Later”, especially, is a terrific read providing the original EMH founder’s thoughts on the theory’s relevancy even in today’s financial world. We also would like to recommend two academic papers that offer inquisitive views of EMH and its potential fallacies. Both works - Daniel Kahneman’s Nobel prize work “Maps of Bounded Rationality” and Lawrence, McCabe, and Prakash’s “Answering Financial Anomalies: Sentiment-Based Stock Pricing” - explore the realms of behavior finance. By questioning...
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...QUT | Case Study 4: Market Efficiency | Bill Miller and Value Trust | | Name: Huey Ngu Student ID: 08324093Tutor Name: David FairDate: 1 November 2013 | Words: 1097 | Contents Introduction 2 Past and current performance of Value Trust 2 Investment strategy of Bill Miller 3 Efficient Market Hypothesis 3 Bill Miller’s letter to shareholders 4 Changes in Chief Investment Officer (CIO) 4 Recommendation and Conclusion 4 Reference 6 Appendices 8 Appendix A: Data of LMVTX, S&P 500, and 30 years bond 8 Appendix B: Alpha and Beta between 1991 and 2013 9 Appendix C: Alpha and Beta between 1991 and 2005 9 Appendix D: Alpha and Beta between 2006 and 2013 9 Introduction Bill Miller is known as famous fund manager that hold the record of beating benchmark index for 15 years in a row. However, his poor performance after 2005 was the reason that the investors run away from his fund. Hence, arguments of whether Bill Miller’s previous performances involve luck or skills appear. Furthermore, this report will also discuss whether investors should invest in Bill Miller’s Value Trust. Past and current performance of Value Trust Figure [ 1 ]: LMVTX VS S&P500 (Morningstar Principia , 2013) Bill Miller had made an achievement of longest streak performance of beating the market. Refer to figure 1, it had showed that Bill Miller’s Value Trust had consistently beat the benchmark index of Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) between 1991 and...
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...Bill Miller and Value Trust Case Analysis Case Facts: 1 By middle 2005, Leg Mason Value Trust managed by Bill had outperformed S&P 500 index for 14 years in a row. This was longest successful run by any fund manager. The average return on the fund was 14.6% which surpassed the S&P by 3.67% per year. The value trust only had 36 holdings, 10 of which accounted for 50% of the fund’s assets. No manager had matched Miller’s consistent index beating record. Miller’s results were in contradiction to the conventional theory which suggests that it is extremely difficult to beat the market on a sustained basis as it is characterized by high competition, easy entry and informational efficiency. Problem Statement: The Lag Mason Value Trust has been able to outperform the S&P 500 index for 15 consecutive years till 2005. Will the trust to able to consistently deliver similar performance in future? Should a rational investor buy shares in Value Trust as on middle of 2005? What can be possible reasons for the exemplary record of the Value Trust? Can the reasons of the trust’s success can be only attributed to the trading skills and style of Bill Miller or is it sheer luck? US Mutual Fund Market: The mutual fund market in the US has seen exponential growth in the last 30 years. The numbers of mutual funds have increased from 361 to 8,044 in between 1970 to 2005. By 2004, Mutual fund owned nearly 20% of the outstanding stocks of US companies. The value of...
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...Group Case 1: “Bill Miller and Value Trust” 1. How well has Value Trust performed as of the date of the case? By almost any measure, Bill Miller’s Value Trust had been a remarkable success over the past 15 years. Over this time, the Value Trust had an average return of 14.6%, beating the S&P 500 by 3.67%. Miller took the long approach to investing, rarely beating out the whole market of fund managers in any particular year, but consistently outperforming them over the last 15 years. In 2005, Miller’s Value Trust had beat the S&P’s 500 Index for 14 years in a row, while no other manager had ever been able to beat it for more than 7 years. Sadly, Miller’s fund has trailed the S&P 500 in four out of the past five years. 2. What might explain the fund’s performance? Bill Miller’s investment strategy at Capital Management Value Trust has always sought long-term growth of capital. Value Trust’s assets were invested primarily in 10 large-capitalization companies with some additional investments in riskier growth stocks at higher price-to-earnings ratios that paid little to no dividends. The fund’s strategy was to focus on equity securities that offered potential for capital long-term growth. The reason for the fund’s poor performance since 2004 is likely attributable to its significant investment in equity securities. Likely, some of this investment included mortgage-backed securities, i.e. investment in the subprime mortgage market; thus significant fund holdings...
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...Bill Miller and Value Trust Background Information Bill Miller is one of the most renowned professional fund managers. This can be proven by the outperformance of the Value Trust, which is managed by him, compared to its benchmark index, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (S&P 500), for an astonishing 14 years in a row; and this marked the longest streak of success for any manager in the mutual-fund industry. By the middle of 2005, Value Trust is worth $11.2-billion. Bill Miller’s approach to investment management was research-intensive and highly concentrated. For instance, nearly 50 percent of Value Trust’s assets were invested in just 10 large-capitalization companies. While most of Bill Miller’s investments were value stocks, he was not averse to taking large positions in the stocks of growth companies. In other words, Bill Miller’s investing style is iconoclastic: “You simply can’t do what he’s done in the supremely competitive, ultra-efficient world of stock picking by following the pack…The fact is that Miller has spent decades studying freethinking overachievers, and along the way he’s become one himself.” Mutual Funds Definition A mutual fund is an investment vehicle that pooled the funds of individual investors to buy a portfolio of securities, stocks, bonds, and money-market instruments to meet specific investment objectives; investors owned a pro rata share of the overall investment portfolio (Bruner, 2007). The various investments included in a fund’s...
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...Summary of the case: Billy Miller, who manages the Value Trust Fund, consistently leads his company to beat the mutual fund market for 14 years. This remarkable outcome is viewed as impossible mission by those economists and financial analysts. Is this a pure luck or Bill Miller has some unique strategies to run the company? Miller said: “Maybe it’s not 100% luck. Maybe 95% luck.” If it is just lucky to achieve the result in today, should we invest our money into this fund? Or we should do a detailed analysis before we make a decision. Problem No.1 Define the problem of the case: Is Value Trust a good company to invest? 1) What is mutual fund? What does it do? 2) How is the market of mutual fund? Is it doing good or bad? 3) How is the Value Trust Company doing compare to others? 4) What is market prospective of mutual fund and how does it fit with Bill Miller’s strategy? 5) Is Bill Miller lucky to get the prominent result or he owns certain investment skills 6) Should we invest? Market Analysis: Mutual Fund market was the largest in the world. It serves several economic functions for investors, afforded the individual investor the opportunity to diversify his/her portfolio efficiently without having a large amount to achieve the efficiency; a higher return could be earned by investor who has professional expertise compare to securities; Isolating individual investor and the painful vicissitudes of the marketplace. With these advantages, investors...
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...11/24/12 2:24 PM Page 23 CASE 2 Bill Miller and Value Trust Bill Miller’s success is so far off the charts that you have to ask whether it is superhuman. Quite simply, fund managers are not supposed to be this good. Is it mortal genius, or is it celestial luck?1 By the middle of 2005, Value Trust, an $11.2-billion mutual fund2 managed by William H. (Bill) Miller III, had outperformed its benchmark index, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (S&P 500), for an astonishing 14 years in a row. This record marked the longest streak of success for any manager in the mutual-fund industry; the next longest period of sustained performance was only half as long. For many fund managers, simply beating the S&P 500 in any single year would have been an accomplishment, yet Miller had achieved consistently better results during both the bull markets of the late 1990s and the bear markets of the early 2000s. Over the previous 15 years, investors in Value Trust, one of a family of funds managed by the Baltimore, Maryland–based Legg Mason, Inc., could look back on the fund’s remarkable returns: an average annual total return of 14.6%, which surpassed the S&P 500 by 3.67% per year. An investment of $10,000 in Value Trust at its inception, in April 1982, would have grown to more than $330,000 by March 2005. Unlike the fund’s benchmark, which was a capitalization-weighted index composed of 500 widely held common stocks, Value Trust only had 36 holdings, 10 of which accounted...
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...For example, Bill Miller’s Legg Mason Value Trust (ticker: LMVTX), a mutual fund that has beaten its benchmark (the S&P 500 index) in each of the last 14 calendar years, routinely holds stocks that have seen their prices drop substantially recently. In making that choice, Miller essentially selects stocks that appear to be in trouble, but are ones for which the market seems to have overreacted—he invests “where there is fear.”1 growth and value Rather, we simply point out that doing so exposes us to greater risk and requires us to conduct much more extensive analyses. We are reminded, however, of a quote from Mark Twain, “Put all your eggs in one basket and—WATCH THAT BASKET!”8 An advantage of holding fewer stocks is that it is easier to monitor them, but, in general, we must be extremely confident of our analyses in order to hold so few stocks he tends to select the stocks of companies that are financially sound. Where Miller deviates from many other fund managers is that he often chooses stocks that have been beaten down in recent months/years. This provides us with another lesson. In the aftermath of the Dennis Kozlowski scandal, the stock of Tyco (TYC) dropped from $60 to nearly $8. Miller believed that the scandal had little (if anything) to do with the company’s core business model, so he bought heavily. The stock has since rebounded to the mid $30s, giving Miller a sizable return on his investment. Miller describes this as buying “where there is fear.”2 The lesson...
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...Case 1: Warren Buffet a) Buffett portrays intrinsic value as “The only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.” (Bruner et al, 2009 p.7) It has accorded such importance because it can be used to estimate the value of the businesses ongoing operations and not the companies stock. Through the calculation of the discounted cash flows, and moreover the net present value of the forecasted performance, we can therefore figure out whether the investment holds the potential to generate value. By comparing these amounts to ones within the market and therefore being able to identify certain businesses that are very undervalued. The alternatives of valuing an investment include calculating the book value or accounting profit. Buffett rejects the alternatives to intrinsic value because he believes that the conventional accounting approach or methods follow certain rules that do not accurately forecast the future of the investments performance. (b) The very essence of Buffett’s investment philosophy is that of his use of intrinsic value to determine the quality and future value of an investment, instead of basing it on accounting reality. However, accounting profit should be used hand in hand with intrinsic value because it helps clarify managements skills and how they put their capital to use. Buffett calculates the discounted cash flows of the particular company, therefore understanding its economic reality. Rather than the financial statements...
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...Global Perspectives on Investment Management LEARNING FROM THE LEADERS Conversation with a Money Master BILL MILLER, CFA with FRED H. SPEECE, JR., CFA Bill Miller, CFA, is chairman and chief investment officer at Legg Mason Capital Management, Inc., and was named ‘‘The Greatest Money Manager of the 1990s’’ by Money magazine. In this question and answer session, Fred H. Speece, Jr., CFA, interviews Bill Miller about his insights into portfolio management in general and value investing in particular. Continuing a tradition of lifelong learning a cfa institute publication Conversation with a Money Master BILL MILLER, CFA Bill Miller, CFA, is chairman and chief investment officer at Legg Mason Capital Management, Inc., and was named ‘‘The Greatest Money Manager of the 1990s’’ by Money magazine. In this question and answer session, Fred H. Speece, Jr., CFA, interviews Bill Miller about his insights into portfolio management in general and value investing in particular. Speece: You have an impressive long-term track record as a portfolio manager. Given today’s very efficient and sophisticated market, do we still have room for stock picking? Miller: When we discuss market efficiency, we run into a semantic issue about what exactly is meant by the term ‘‘market efficiency.’’ At Legg Mason, we believe that the markets are pragmatically efficient, which means that they are extremely competitive and usually beat most active managers. For example, fewer than 35 percent of...
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...CASE STUDY (GROUP ASSIGNMENT) _________________________________________________________________________ MBSA 1453 FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE SEM 2 (2015/2016) _________________________________________________________________________ INSTRUCTIONS TO LEARNER 1. This assignment is set in English. 2. Answer in English. 3. Your assignment should be prepared in group (2 persons each group). 4. Your assignment should be typed using 11 point Calibri font and 1.5 line spacing. Each page typed must follow the standard margins: left/right 32 mm (1.25"), top 25 mm (1.0"), and bottom 32 mm (1.25"). 5. Do not copy the assignment question and instructions to your answer. 6. You must submit your assignment ON-LINE via the MyIBS. You are advised to keep a copy of your submitted assignment and proof of the submission for personal reference. 7. You should submit your assignment ONCE only in a SINGLE file. The file must be in MS-WORD format. Please ensure that you submit the CORRECT and latest version of file. File which is wrongly submitted must be re-submitted on-line before the deadline. 8. Your assignment must be submitted before 30th May 2016. Submission after 30th May 2016 will NOT be accepted. 9. You should not copy another person’s/ group’s assignment. You should also not plagiarise another person’s/ group’s work as your own. Plagiarism is a serious offence. Learners who are caught doing so will be penalized and the assignment rejected. 10....
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...Bill Miller and Value Trust Value Trust has surpassed the S&P 500 by an average of 3.67% for the previous fifteen years. Value Trust also maintained Morningstar’s five star rating. Mutual fund investment performance can be measured by finding out its net asset value and Annual Total Return. Net Asset Value can be computed as the fund’s total assets minus the liabilities divided by funds shares outstanding. Annual total return can be measured by the increase or the decrease in net asset value plus the fund’s income distribution. These are used to find the measure of the percentage of annual growth rate of net asset value assuming that reinvestment, and the absolute dollar value today of an investment made at some point in the past. Good performance would require the investment to provide a measurable reward-to-volatility trade-off and to consistently outperform the major markets such as the S&P 500 and Russell. Miller’s methodology includes buying low-price, high intrinsic-value stocks, researching areas of the market that look least promising, the lowest average cost wins, high price stocks can still be good (Wal-Mart and Microsoft), think long-term and anticipate rather than reacting, mixture of cyclically underpriced stock and secularly underpriced stock, be aggressive when stocks are low and less when stocks are high, and finally they must be able to take risk for huge gains. His methodology takes into account behavioral finance. He looks forward to the market’s overreaction...
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... Table of Contents Page Case: Name and Number, Bruner 5e Note Number I. C12- Best Practices—WACC No Questions II. C2- Bill Miller & Value Trust 2 III. C5- Financial Detective, 2005 Contained in Case IV. C7- Body Shop Intl* Contained in Case, but see page 3 V. C6- Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. 4 VI. C17- The Investment Detective* Contained in Case VII. C28- Intro. to Debt Policy & Value* No Questions, but review M & M Theory on debt and value of the firm. VIII. HBS Case- “Leveraged Betas and the Cost of Equity No Questions IX. C16- The Boeing 7E 7* 5 X. C26- Jet Blue Airways, IPO Valuation* 6 XI.a C35- Merton Electronics 7 XI.b C36- Carefour S. A.* 8 XI.c C44- Palamon Capital Partners* 9 XII. GM Dividend Policy Negotiation (Information to be provided by Dr. Kiss) * Note: Excel Spreadsheets containing some of the exhibits from the case are available for this case at www.mhhe.com/bruner5e FIN 620, CASE QUESTIONS DR. KISS Please allow these questions to serve as a guide when you prepare your case write-up in accordance with the syllabus or other instructions Case 2- Bill Miller & Value Trust Suggested Questions for Your Preparation of the Case. 1. How well has Value Trust performed in recent years? In making that assessment, what benchmark(s) are you using? How do you measure investment performance? What does good performance...
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...AACT 4435-01 Federal Tax 2 Exam #1 Fall 2014 Chapters 5-8 Name: | Date: | Grade: | Examination instructions: 1) The examination is intended to test your knowledge of the topic covered in chapters 5 through 8 of the course text. 2) Answer all questions on the examination paper in the spaces provided. 3) Read the questions carefully. If you need to make any assumptions you must state them in order to receive credit. 4) This exam consists of the following: a) 20 true and false questions worth 1 point each for a total of 20 points. b) 8 critical thinking problems worth 10 points each for a total of 80 points. **5). In order to receive partial credit on the problems you will need to show your calculations, True and False (1 point each) | Problems (10 points each) | 1 ______ | 1 _______ | 2 _____ | 2 _______ | 3 ___ ___ | 3 _______ | 4 _______ | 4 _______ | 5 _______ | 5 _______ | 6 _______ | 6 _______ | 7 _______ | 7 _______ | 8 ______ | 8 _______ | 9 _______ | | 10 _______ | | 11 _______ | | 12 _______ | | 13 _______ | | 14 _______ | | 15 _______ | | 16 ______ | | 17 _______ | | 18 ______ | | 19 ______ | | 20 _______ | | True and False 1. Unemployment compensation is always included in gross income. 2. Social security benefits are always included in gross income. 3. An example of a qualified benefit is an employer-subsidized cafeteria. 4. An annuity is a contract...
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