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The Concept Of The Modern Portfolio Theory

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In 1952 the basic concept of the modern portfolio theory was written by Harry Markowitz, in which he explained that assets in an investment portfolio are not only to be selected on the basis of its merit but also by how it’s price changes relative to every other asset in the portfolio. Investment can be stated as a trade-off between expected return and risk, the riskier the investment the higher the return and vice versa. It allows us to make a decision to choose between the portfolio with either the highest rate of return or the lowest amount of risk. The risk of different stocks can be reduced if a portfolio consists of stocks with different risks and returns for example; if stock A has high risk and stock B has low risk, the overall portfolio risk is less, as it is the weighted average of both risks. Owning different shares with different risks in a portfolio is known as diversification. Markowitz hence developed the efficient frontier of portfolio, the efficient set in which investors choose the most suitable portfolio for them. This concept gave birth to the Capital asset pricing model by William Sharpe in 1964 and linter 1965; they state that there are two types of risk, systematic risk and unsystematic risk. The former is the market risk that cannot be diversified while the latter is the risk associated with individual stocks which can be reduced through diversification as stated by the MPT (Investopedia, 2003) Investors basically invest by delaying consumption now

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