Arbitrage Pricing Theory Apt

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The arbitrage pricing theory (APT) describes the price where a mispriced asset is expected to be. It is often viewed as an alternative to the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), since the APT has more flexible assumption requirements. Whereas the CAPM formula requires the market's expected return, APT uses the risky asset's expected return and the risk premium of a number of macro-economic factors. Arbitrageurs use the APT model to profit by taking advantage of mispriced securities. A mispriced security will have a price that differs from the theoretical price predicted by the model. By going short an overpriced security, while concurrently going long the portfolio the APT calculations were based on, the arbitrageur is in a position to make a theoretically risk-free profit. Arbitrage Pricing Theory applies to economies that are regulated by the Law of One Price. The Law of One Price states that two identical goods can’t but be sold with the same price. If they sell at different price arbitrage takes up. Here are the fundamental assumptions of Arbitrage Pricing Theory: 1. Capital Markets are perfectly competitive. 2. Investors always prefer more wealth to less wealth. 3. Perfect competition prevails and there is no transaction cost in the market: frictionless market. A perfectly competitive market is one where any trader can buy or sell unlimited quantities of the relevant security without changing the security’s price. In an arbitrage portfolio-a set of goods held by an owner in an economy conform to the APT conditions-the investor tries to increase the returns from his portfolio without increasing fund in the portfolio, without spending other money. Moreover, he also likes to keep the risk at the same level. To do so, if the investor got in his portfolio A, B and C securities, to increase returns from his portfolio without further investing he will have to

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