1. Let’s pretend in its effort to control inflation, the Federal Reserve raises the federal funds target to a jaw-dropping 13%. This has caused a ripple effect on all other interest rates in the economy, including saving deposit rates. JPMorgan Chase offers an APR of 15% that is compounded daily, Bank of America offers an APR of 15.5% that is compounded quarterly, and Wells Fargo offers an APR of 16% that is compounded annually. If you are a saver, which bank is offering the most attractive deposit rate?

2. Say you are an associate analyst at a venture capital firm. Your firm is currently evaluating a proposal from a business that has already established a product and sales but needs more money to begin producing at scale. Among many things you are tasked with researching, you must figure out how the returns of this company relate to the overall returns of the market. Specifically, your supervisor wants to know if movements of the market explain most of the movements in the firm’s returns. What analysis could you perform to assess this question? How would you go about implementing it?

3. You are trying to build an optimal complete portfolio for your client which involves first developing an optimal risky portfolio, and then mixing it with the risk-free asset. How would you go about this using the Markowitz (efficient frontier) procedure? Hint: In your answer, you should touch on: portfolio weights, expected return, standard deviation, efficient frontier, minimum-variance portfolio, Sharpe ratio, risk-premium, and risk aversion/tolerance.