ou are contemplating a portfolio of two risky assets, comprising 75% in Deakin Ltd and 25% in Hall Ltd.

Your broker's analyst has predicted that, on an ongoing basis, the expected returns from these assets will be 8% per annum from Deakin Ltd and 10% per annum from Hall Ltd.

The standard deviations of the returns from the assets are expected to be 9% for Deakin Ltd and 11% for Hall Ltd.

The correlation between the two assets is 0.30.

Answer the following question parts, showing all calculations in each case.

• Calculate the expected annual percentage return of the contemplated portfolio.
• For the above portfolio, calculate the standard deviation.[HINT: See section 7.4 of Brailsford's (2015) text-book.)
• What happens to the portfolio variance in (a) and (b) above when the asset returns are perfectly negatively correlated? Explain carefully.
• With the aid of two hypothetical worked examples, explain hoiow expected utility is a useful criterion for investor choice when the investor payoffs are certain.