The HPS Trustees have decided to invest in non-U.S. equity markets and have hired Jacob Hind,...

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The HPS Trustees have decided to invest in non-U.S. equity markets and have hired Jacob Hind, a specialist manager, to implement this decision. He has rec- ommended that an unhedged equities position be taken in Japan, providing the following comment and the table data to support his views: "Appreciation of a foreign currency increases the returns to a U.S. dollar inves- tor. Since appreciation of the Yen from 100%/$U.S. to 98/$U.S. is expected, the Japanese stock position should not be hedged." Market atos and Hind's Expectations US. Japan Spot rate (yen per $U.S.) n/a 100 Hind's 12-month currency forecast (yen per $U.S.) n/a 98 1-year Eurocurrency rate (% per annum) 6.00 0.80 Hind's 1-year inflation forecast (% per annum) 3.00 0.50 Assume that the investment horizon is one year and that there are no costs asso- ciated with currency hedging. 2The mean return on the portfolio is simply the weighted average of the returns on the individual securities that are included in the portfolio. The portfolio variance, on the other hand, can be computed using the following formula: Var(R) = 2,3xx, where x represents an investment weight for the ith security, and a, denotes the variances and covariances among individual securities. In the case where the portfolio is composed of two securities, its variance is computed as follows: Var(R)=x,20,2 + x + 2xx0 The standard deviation, of course, is the square root of the variance. It is also noted that the covariance , is related the correlation coefficient p, via o, - p, 0.0, where o, is the standard deviation of returns on the ith security. The HPS Trustees have decided to invest in non-U.S. equity markets and have hired Jacob Hind, a specialist manager, to implement this decision. He has rec- ommended that an unhedged equities position be taken in Japan, providing the following comment and the table data to support his views: "Appreciation of a foreign currency increases the returns to a U.S. dollar inves- tor. Since appreciation of the Yen from 100%/$U.S. to 98/$U.S. is expected, the Japanese stock position should not be hedged." Market atos and Hind's Expectations US. Japan Spot rate (yen per $U.S.) n/a 100 Hind's 12-month currency forecast (yen per $U.S.) n/a 98 1-year Eurocurrency rate (% per annum) 6.00 0.80 Hind's 1-year inflation forecast (% per annum) 3.00 0.50 Assume that the investment horizon is one year and that there are no costs asso- ciated with currency hedging. 2The mean return on the portfolio is simply the weighted average of the returns on the individual securities that are included in the portfolio. The portfolio variance, on the other hand, can be computed using the following formula: Var(R) = 2,3xx, where x represents an investment weight for the ith security, and a, denotes the variances and covariances among individual securities. In the case where the portfolio is composed of two securities, its variance is computed as follows: Var(R)=x,20,2 + x + 2xx0 The standard deviation, of course, is the square root of the variance. It is also noted that the covariance , is related the correlation coefficient p, via o, - p, 0.0, where o, is the standard deviation of returns on the ith security.