Portfolio risk management - Essay Example

tfolio analysis studies the performance of different portfolios under different circumstances (Reilly & Brown 2011).Portfolios can be grouped according to industries, countries or sector. Each group consists of sub-unit. For example, the financial sector can be made up of several banks or the Airline industry can be made up of several airline companies. The analysis of each portfolio helps an investor in making a decision when investing. Most likely, a rational investor will choose the best portfolio and screen out the ones that are not essential based on objective criteria.

A good portfolio is characterized by high returns on investment (Reilly & Brown 2011). Portfolio analysis requires subjective judgment as it is not easy to segment different industries. Portfolio analysis is a process as different financial instruments have to be evaluated one by one. The process is time consuming and involves a lot of effort. In spite of these odds, Markowitz the fonder of modern portfolio analysis has simplified the process by suggesting use of expected return and variance (Brigham & Houston 2009).

In this report, we will discuss four steps of constructing a portfolio. Q 1.a Construction of a portfolio The portfolio we are to construct consists of IBM and Shell Gas shares using weekly data from 2007 to 2012. A good portfolio is characterized by high returns and moderate risk. It is also well diversified just like in our case where we have IBM and Shell Gas shares. The first step in constructing a portfolio is an assessment of your expectations and attitude towards risk. Basically, there are two types of investors, the aggressive investor and the conservative investor.

An aggressive investor is willing to take more risks by devoting larger portions to equity and less to bond and other fixed income securities. On the contrary, the conservative investor takes less risk as his main goal is to protect the value. On the other hand, an aggressive investor aims at maximizing returns by accepting more risk. A moderately good portfolio is one which satisfies the tolerance of average risks, attracts all those people who are willing to take in more risks in their portfolios in order to help them in the achievement of a balance of capital growth and income.

Therefore, as an investor you should be in a position of knowing the category where you suit. The second step is choosing the portfolio. In our case, we consider the individual shares that have high returns and have the outperformed the FTSE 250 mid-cap index (FTMC). The portfolio will have 21 shares. Below is the portfolio f our choice: After choosing the portfolio, the next step is to identify, risk and return. In identifying risk and return, we use mean-variance analysis which was derived by Markowitz in 1952.

Markowitz (2000) suggests that a portfolio with the lowest level of risk is to be