Fundamental Models in Financial Theory

Abstract

This book provides an innovative, integrated, and methodical approach to understanding complex financial models, integrating topics usually presented separately into a comprehensive whole. The book brings together financial models and high-level mathematics, reviewing the mathematical background necessary for understanding these models organically and in context. It begins with underlying assumptions and progresses logically through increasingly complex models to operative conclusions. Readers who have mastered the material will gain the tools needed to put theory into practice and incorporate financial models into real-life investment, financial, and business scenarios. Modern finance's most bothersome shortcoming is that the two basic models for building an optimal investment portfolio, Markowitz's mean-variance model and Sharpe and Treynor's Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), fall short when we try to apply them using Excel Solver. This book explores these two models in detail, and for the first time in a textbook the Black-Litterman model for building an optimal portfolio constructed from a small number of assets (developed at Goldman Sachs) is thoroughly presented. The model's integration of personal views and its application using Excel templates are demonstrated. The book also offers innovative presentations of the Modigliani--Miller model and the Consumption-Based Capital Asset Pricing Model (CCAPM). Problems at the end of each chapter invite the reader to put the models into immediate use. Fundamental Models in Financial Theory is suitable for classroom use or as a reference for finance practitioners.