Initial Return is the product of a collaboration between finance professionals, academics, and investors. We produce high-quality, educational content for investors, traders, and finance students.
When evaluating the performance of mutual funds, ETFs, or your own portfolio, it is vital to do that on a risk-adjusted basis. That is, it would be misleading to compare investment opportunities on the basis of returns only as higher returns normally require bearing more risk. In this post, we discuss one of the most […]
Fungible tokens are one of the two main types of digital tokens, the other type being non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In this post, we explain in detail what fungible tokens are and how they differ from NFTs. Jump to: What is fungibility? What are fungible tokens? ‘Clean Bitcoins’ vs ‘dirty Bitcoins’ What is fungibility? Fungibility is […]
Many of us have heard about cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Ether. But, what is a cryptocurrency exchange, and how does it function? In a nutshell, a cryptocurrency exchange is a platform that enables investors to buy or sell a particular cryptocurrency in exchange for fiat money (dollars, pounds, euros, etc.) or another cryptocurrency. […]
In this post, we offer a beginner’s guide to NFTs. We explain the meaning of an NFT and how NFTs are be traded in marketplaces. We also discuss various types of NFT scams. Jump to: What does NFT mean? What is 1/1 NFT? NFT marketplaces NFT scams Final word on NFTs What does NFT mean? […]
Over the past decade, cryptocurrency markets saw immense levels of growth. The stellar increase in the value of bitcoin, wild speculations and bubbles in various digital tokens, and cryptocurrency exchange hacks have been extensively covered in media. Even people with little interest in finance have become familiar with terms such as initial coin offerings, non-fungible […]
This investments quiz aims to test your knowledge of the material covered in our free investments course. The quiz is a multiple-choice test. It consists of three sections: The answers and solutions are provided at the bottom of this page. Section A: Return calculations 1. You buy a single share of a stock for $10. […]
Descriptive statistics offer a simple way of understanding distributions of stock returns. They give us an idea about a distribution’s centrality, dispersion, and other features. In this tutorial, we will show you how to generate descriptive statistics for stock returns using Excel’s data analysis tool. Jump to: Using Excel to get descriptive statistics for stock […]
In the previous lesson, we learned about the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). According to the CAPM, any risky asset’s expected return depends on its exposure to market risk. So, CAPM is based on the idea that market risk is the sole systematic risk factor. Because systematic risk can’t be eliminated via diversification, risk-averse investors […]
The capital asset pricing model (or the CAPM) is probably one of the most commonly taught topics in finance. This is not because it is a perfect model. In fact, it is far from it. However, the CAPM is built upon some of the most fundamental concepts in finance. Furthermore, CAPM is widely used in […]
The market portfolio is the market value-weighted portfolio of all risky assets in an economy. In this post, we show how the market portfolio is equivalent to the optimal risky portfolio when all investors behave according to the modern portfolio theory. Learning objectives Moving from the optimal risky portfolio to the market portfolio According to […]
Step-by-step tutorials:
Downloading stock price data
Plotting stock prices and returns
Creating a histogram of stock returns
Descriptive statistics for stock returns
Computing the correlation between two stocks
Modern portfolio theory:
Portfolio return
Portfolio risk
Efficient frontier
Optimal risky portfolio
Market equilibrium:
Capital asset pricing model (CAPM)
Arbitrage pricing theory (APT)