Theory tells us the best way to value any asset is by looking at the present value of the cash-flow stream it generates. With business valuation, for example, many authors of paperback books advocate short-cut approaches, but most of those short-cut approaches are gross generalizations that over-simplify the valuation process. They have such illogical assumptions that if you step back and look at those assumptions, you would never use that approach in the first place.

Portfolio theory shows that by combining two assets with returns that have a correlation coefficient of less than 1.0, we can create a portfolio that has risk that is less than the weighted average of the risks of the two individual assets. This result is the basis for the recommended diversification that investors always hear from their financial advisors.

The Capital Asset Pricing Model is a theoretically-based model used to empirically estimate the rate of return an investor should expect to earn on a particular asset. This expected return is a function of the financial market conditions, as measured by the return that could be earned on a default risk-free asset and the return on the market in general, and the asset’s risk relative to the financial market. While this model has been criticized in the financial literature, it is still the most applicable and most widely used model to calculate these expected returns.

Long ago, the classic economists defined economic profit as the after-tax earnings reported on the income statement less the opportunity cost of the firm’s equity capital. This opportunity cost represents the cost to the firm of raising capital via equity. Sometimes too much attention is given to earnings and earnings growth at the expense of a focus on the firm’s economic profit. Economic profit is the ultimate measure of the firm’s performance because it shows the residual profit after all costs – operating costs, taxes, debt-financing costs, and equity-financing costs – are deducted from the firm’s revenues.

We make decisions on an incremental basis. That is, we look at the changes and the marginal effects of our decisions. We need to think of all the consequences of our decision-making, including possible impacts that may not appear in our immediate focus.

We must never forget that money has a time value, and the dollars of different time periods are different. In multi-period decisions, we try to draw a timeline that will show all the impacts of the decision and when those impacts will occur. Financial decisions have to be made in the context of other issues besides finance (ethics, regulatory issues, and so on), so every decision must be related to the impact on shareholder value. Notice that I didn’t say shareholder value must be maximized, but the impact must be recognized. Shareholder value should not be maximized to the disadvantage of other important stakeholders.

In terms of what happens within the firm, the basic principles to remember are that if you want to use finance to create value, the first thing you need is a good strategy. The second thing you need is a good internal resource allocation system so that capital is flowing to the highest-value project. The third thing you need is the right performance metrics with which to judge people so that you maximize shareholder value on a day-to-day basis. Finally, you need the right corporate culture within the organization to make sure the implicit rules by which people are being judged and rewarded make sense.

From the external perspective, capital will flow to the highest- value user. The firms that will be valued more highly are the ones that are making positive net present value investments. The market will demand a higher risk premium for investing in firms that are riskier. If you are an investor and you hold a diversified portfolio, you don’t really have to care so much about what is happening in the firm because the capital market at an aggregate level is taking care of allocating resources to the best users. You have to make sure you hold a diversified portfolio so that if one out of the 200 firms in your portfolio disappoints, the whole portfolio doesn’t go down.

Another lesson that people often forget is how important diversification is. Those investors who rely on their 401(k) plan are extremely undiversified. They are single-stock plans. I don’t care how good your company is; if you are not diversified, you are exposed to a lot of risk.

In banking, one of the things that led to the savings and loan crisis (where taxpayers lost over $100 billion) was that the notion of interest rate risks, which is so fundamental to banking, was somehow forgotten because many of these savings and loan associations were making money by taking a lot of interest rate risk – by borrowing via retail deposits and one-year CDs and investing the money in 30-year mortgages. If the yield curve is sloping upward and the interest rates are higher for longer-maturity instruments, you don’t need a lot of intelligence to make money by borrowing short and lending long. The whole notion of interest rate risk is that interest rates don’t always stay the same. Sometimes interest rates flip, and short rates are higher than long rates. When that happens, you have a huge problem: You start losing money.

In banking, I think one of the most important lessons for financial institutions has been the importance of managing interest rate risk and keeping that risk within prudent bounds. The same rules of diversification, such as having a diversified portfolio and controlling interest rate risk, are absolutely critical when you lend. The role of capital is also important; if you are a bank, having a sufficient amount of capital is very important for your long-run survival and financial health.

In corporate finance, the simple rule is that if you don’t invest in positive net present value projects that create wealth for shareholders, in the long run you will drive your company into the ground. The other lesson in corporate finance is that you can never overlook the importance of how people will behave in response to any sort of system you set up. Behavior within all organizations is largely driven by performance metrics and the explicit/implicit reward system you set up for employees. Having the right compensation design and using the right metrics to judge projects and people have a lot to do with whether the projects you invest in will create value for shareholders.

First is diversification and the way assets are priced on the capital market. You don’t get rewarded for taking risks that are diversifiable. This means that from a risk and return standpoint, you are much better off holding a diversified portfolio.

The second thing to remember is that more often than not, there is no free lunch. The market is pretty efficient at eliminating arbitrage opportunities. If something looks too good, it probably is too good to be true.

Third, there is a positive relationship between risk and return. You can always get higher returns if you are willing to take more risks. But risk is a double-edged sword, so you can also lose more.

The fourth thing is that how much risk you are willing to take is really a function of what your time horizon is. Typically, if your time horizon for liquidating portfolios is short, then you want to take less risky portfolio positions than if your time horizon is longer. If you want to be rewarded for taking risks, then you need to have a fairly long time horizon. In the financial market, when it comes to risks, long really means longer than ten years. If you need to liquidate in less than ten years, then that is something that could affect your portfolio position. You want to stay away from less liquid and more risky assets and move more into less risky and more liquid assets.

We typically distinguish among assets on two dimensions. They are related, but they are distinct concepts. One is risk and the other is liquidity. If you look at the risk dimension in traded assets, the riskiest assets would be options. The next riskiest category of assets would be small-firm stocks, then large-firm stocks, and then bonds. Bonds have different ratings, ranging from junk bonds, which are the riskiest kind of bonds, to government Treasuries, which are the safest kind of bonds.

Along the liquidity spectrum, there is a whole variety of assets, as well. Real estate is very illiquid, especially if it is undeveloped real estate. Stock is very liquid because there is an active secondary market if the company is publicly traded. If it’s a privately held firm, obviously that is a less liquid stock. Typically, the more liquid a stock, the lower the risk is that when you need to sell it, you will be forced to sell it at some fire-sale price.

There is a dimension of risk associated with liquidity, as well. Because of the ability to buy and sell, as opposed to an inherent risk-return tradeoff, liquid assets, just like more risky assets, typically deliver a higher rate of return. If you have a very long time horizon, dispose of assets in a timely manner. You may want to hold some liquid assets in your portfolio to take advantage of the higher rate of return. Historically, there is a hierarchy if you want to hold a portfolio for a long time. Among stocks and bonds, the hierarchy is that small-firm stocks yield the highest expected rates of return. Large-firm stocks come second, and then bonds come third. The lowest rate of return over the long haul is with Treasury instruments. They are the most liquid and the safest. As you are putting your portfolio together, this is the hierarchy of instruments from which to choose. There must be the right balance between liquidity and return and the right balance between risk and return.

Another useful lesson to remember is that historically, the difference between the rate of return on a diversified portfolio of equities and long-term government bonds has been about 7 percent. If you hold a diversified portfolio of stock for a long period of time, on average per year you will earn about 7 percent more than you would get if you invested in long-term Treasury bonds. Let’s say that the rate of return on Treasuries is 5 percent, and let’s say you were to invest in the market. You should expect about 12 percent, given the risk. Looking at the 1990s, when investors were getting 20 percent to 25 percent per year, we should have expected that it wasn’t going to last forever. In a sense, we are now paying back for getting such high returns in the 1990s. Eventually the market returns to its long-run equilibrium. The good news in that is that once we pay back, then we have better times to look forward to.

The formula for the positive relationship between risk and return is called the Capital Asset Pricing Model. The Capital Asset Pricing Model basically tells you what the expected return on a stock should be, given its beta, or its systematic risk. If you are going to be a portfolio investor or if you are going to be in the market, that is something you should know. The formula says that the expected return on any stock is the long-term government bond rate plus the stock’s risk, which is the beta, times this market-risk premium of 7 percent that I mentioned. If my risk-free long-term government bond rate is 5 percent, and I have a stock that is one-and-a-half times as risky as the market, then the expected return on that stock would be one-and-a-half times 7, which is 10.5, plus the 5 percent risk-free rate, or 15.5 percent. This is the rate of return I would need on the stock to invest in it.

There is a relationship between the return you can get on fixed- income instruments and the maturity of the fixed-income instruments. That relationship is called a yield curve. The yield curve basically says that for any maturity there is a rate of return that you can get by investing in that instrument at that maturity. If you invest in longer-maturity instruments, you get a higher rate of return than if you invest in shorter-maturity instruments. If you were to put your money in three-year Treasury bonds, you would get more money than if you put your money in three- month Treasury bills. You are being compensated for investing in an instrument that is more volatile and riskier. The longer the maturity, the greater the price risk of maturity. If you are putting a portfolio together as an investor, you have to understand that you can typically get a higher return by investing in longer-maturity instruments, but you are taking more risk if you don’t plan to hold the instrument all the way through to maturity.

There are also some important lessons on options. If you don’t thoroughly understand options, the best thing to do is to stay away from that market if you are a retail investor. Options are extremely risky. Unlike with stocks, you don’t have the opportunity to be patient once the option expires. The last lesson, related to options, is that options written on more risky stocks typically have more value. As the risk of the stock on which the option was written increases, the value of the option goes up. If you are looking for options with a lot of upside potential, you want to buy them in companies whose stock is very risky, which is the exact opposite of the way we normally think about value and risk. Risk is typically bad for stocks, but it is typically good for options.

• Negative. A negative easement prevents or limits the property owner’s right to control or use his or her property with unlimited freedom. [For example, two townhouses are built adjacent to each other, and Townhouse A builds a sundeck on her roof to enjoy the sun. She can try to get an easement against her neighbor in Townhouse B to prevent him from increasing his building height in any way that may significantly block her sunlight.]
• Positive. A positive easement allows an individual or group to use the property of another property owner. This use must be for a specific purpose. [For example, Laura owns a ten-acre lot next to the lake. She sells a three-acre portion by the road to Brad, but Brad's land is blocked from the lake by Laura's remaining seven acres. As part of the sales agreement, therefore, Brad gets an easement to use a small roadway through Laura's property to access the lake. Brad can only use that easement to access the lake; he cannot build a guest cottage or garage on it, because his easement use is limited.]

An easement is a legal encumbrance upon a property and its ownership. Easements affect both the title to the property and the property’s physical condition

If the grantor’s purported interest are false or invalid, no ownership interests or property are conveyed. Also, if the grantor gains ownership interest after the quitclaim deed is conveyed, that ownership interest remains with the grantor and is not covered by the outdated quitclaim
deed.

Quitclaims are often used in corrective or simple situations. For example, if the title erroneously lists the ownership as Susan Jones (instead of Suzanna Jones) Suzanna can record a

quitclaim deed with the correct spelling. Another example is if Quincy helped his daughter Paula buy a house, and then Quincy wanted to remove his name from the title, he can issue a quitclaim deed that would remove him from the title.

Quitclaims are also recommended if the grantor (seller) is unsure about the quality of the title he or she possesses. For example, if you obtained a property through a foreclosure sale or adverse possession, you may want to consider using a quitclaim deed when you sell it.