Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Sharpe & Treynor Ratio of Mutual funds

Sharpe Ratio
This ratio measures the ratio of return earned in excess of the risk free rate (normally Treasury instruments) on a portfolio to the portfolio's total risk
Portfolio risk is measured by the standard deviation in its returns over the measurement period. In other words it tells you how much better did you do for the risk assumed.

It is measured by:  (Portfolio return - Risk free return)/Std deviation of portfolio

The Sharpe ratio is an appropriate measure of performance for an overall portfolio particularly when it is compared to another portfolio, or another index such as the Nifty, Mid cap index etc.

It tells us whether the excess return generated was due to smart investment or was due to a very high risk taken by the fund manager.

Treynor ratio
This ratio is similar to the above except it uses beta instead of standard deviation.
It's also known as the Reward to Volatility Ratio.
It is the ratio of a fund's average excess return to the fund's beta.
It measures the returns earned in excess of those that could have been earned on a riskless investment per unit of market risk assumed.
It is measured by : (Avg Portfolio return - Avg risk free return)/beta of portfolio

Notes:
It would be useful to remember that any portfolio consists of two types of risks - systemic or market risks and non systemic risks.

Systemic or market risks represents the movement in portfolio due to movement in the market. This relation between the portfolio and the market movement is what is measured by beta. Hence Treynors measure measures the excess return per unit of systemic risk taken.This is the reason why it is generally said that Treynors' measure is a good approach to evaluate well diversified portfolio.

Non systemic risks represents scrip specific risks.This is represented by the standard deviation of the portfolio. Hence sharpe measure uses this to measure the excess return generated per unit of risk of the portfolio itself. If you have a non diversified portfolio then it doesnt make any sense to compare it with the market indices because the movement of the scrip will rarely be influenced or will have no direct linkage to movement in indices.

What is "Alpha"
 

This is the difference between a fund's actual return and those that could have been made on a benchmark portfolio with the same risk- i.e. beta.

So it is basically used to measure the relative performance of two funds having the same beta. i.e. comparing apples to apples. This gives a reasonable good measure of a fund manager's performance and could be used for devising incentive strategies for the fund manager

Hope you found the above useful

Monday, May 07, 2007

me, anshu and doss with our kiddos


DSC01030
Originally uploaded by srini196812.
It just seems yesterday that all three of us were in college, studying and planning our career ahead, and here we are in our middle age on the wrong side of our 30s with our off springs .......

time just flies by and very soon the three of us will be retired old gentlemen (?)........

sun temple, konark orissa


DSC01170
Originally uploaded by srini196812.
the old man sitting at the steps with two lions guarding the steps is quite symbolic of the age and the fragile conditon of the historic monument at the sun temple (konark, orissa, India)

the wheel at konark temple, konark


DSC01179
Originally uploaded by srini196812.
the famous wheel at the konark temple......