Intention: The purpose of this thesis is to see if an active investment decision in the Swedish Premium Pension System would result in a higher return than a non-active investment decision. A non-active investment decision is equivalent to leaving the money in AP7 Premium Savings Fund.Method: This thesis is a statistical analysis and has a descriptive character in which the calculations are based on secondary data, thus the thesis has a quantitative character. Furthermore three active portfolios in different risk categories have been chosen. These portfolios are compared with the AP7 Premium Savings Fund?s returns.

Interest for Mutual funds has been enormous in Sweden and since 1970 has savings increased from 300 million SEK to about 900 billion SEK. An important reason for this increasing is the strong development of the stock markets has got and, the impairment of the public pension and the increasing of necessity of the private saving..

Today, there is no uniform definition of what an ethical fund is. Fund management companies choose themselves what they believe is ethical and not. The lack of the definition makes it difficult for consumers to understand why these funds are special compared to other funds. The purpose of this study is to examine three Swedish companies; KPA Pension, Swedbank Robur and Folksam, to obtain a clearer picture of the concept ethical funds and its definition. The study describes each company's view of Ethics and how they may affect other companies to work for a more sustainable world.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the conflict of interest between shareholders, life insurance companies and insurers in stock life insurance companies operated on a mutual basis from an agency-theoretic perspective. Further, this thesis aims to explore from an ownership-theoretical perspective, why this conflict of interest exist. A qualitative research has been performed and the empirical data is foremost based on interviews with persons from the life insurance industry and public prints. The study concludes that the stock life insurance company operated on a mutual basis has two principals whose interests are in conflict. History has shown that stockowners? interests have been prioritized on the expense of the insurers.

We have in this essay studied the Swedish Hedge Fund Market available for the average Swedish private investor. We have closely looked at the risk measurements that are applicable on the evaluation of Hedge Funds today, and furthermore studied how they are communicated and what they actually contribute with in terms of risk and yield. Our survey attempts to clarify the shortcomings in the communication between the Hedge Fund Managers and their smaller investors. Do they really know where they put their money? The market is rapidly expanding and our goal was to find improved ways to inform about the Hedge Funds risks and opportunities.

The purpose of the thesis has been to explore the use of hedge fund styles when constructing portfolios of hedge funds (i.e. funds of hedge funds). The central question is if the use of hedge fund styles can significantly explain and improve risk adjusted returns (characterized by Sharpe ratios). The study has been done in collaboration with Optimized Portfolio Management AB who desire further knowledge and evaluation of hedge fund styles for their fund of hedge funds.To be able to create successful ex ante portfolios we have explored various prediction models for both risk and return. Our findings indicate that return prediction is problematic using simple models such as regression since the risk exposure of the indices appear to change significantly over time.

The purpose of this essay is to explore the significance for former drug addicts who, during their treatment against drug abuse, have had a therapist with a drug addiction in his or her past. A qualitative case study has been used as method in which four former drug users have been interviewed. We have compiled the results based on five key themes in order to get a comprehensive picture of the relevance of common experiences regarding drug abuse, based on former addicts? experiences. This has been done in connection with a review of different theoretical perspectives that we have found relevant to the investigation. Our findings have then been compared with previous research in the field.

 Bakgrund:I Sverige har 76 % av befolkningen innehav i fonder och den totala fondförmögenheten uppgår till 1 925 miljarder. Kapitalvinstskatten ligger på 30 % och utlöses endast vid en realisation av vinsten. Många svenskar undviker gärna att aktivera denna skatteeffekt och blir därmed inlåsta i sina fonder.Syfte:Syftet med denna uppsats är att utifrån intervjuer med privata fondsparare och aktörer inom branschen förklara hur kapitalvinstskatten påverkar privatpersoners resonerande och agerande. Detta beteende kommer sedan att analyseras utifrån befintliga teorier inom beteendeekonomi.Metod:För att nå studiens syfte har vi använt oss av en abduktiv metod. Det empiriska materialet har samlats in med hjälp av semistrukturerade intervjuer.

Aim: The aim of this study is to do a comparative study between Swedish Ethical equity Funds with Swedish traditional equity funds in terms of return, risk and risk-adjusted return.Theory: Sharpe ratio and Modigliani-Modigliani.Method: The essay will be based on a quantitative research method in which secondary data is the basis for the calculations. A statistical analysis was applied.Conclusion: The study concludes that there is no significant difference between the ethical fund group and the traditional fund group in terms of return, risk and risk-adjusted returns. The traditional fund group was those who had the best returns but only by small margins..

Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur aktivt förvaltade fonder presterar jämfört med indexfonder, när avkastningen har justerats för förvaltningsavgiften. Indexfonden representeras av ett jämförelseindex och studien omfattar en tioårsperiod, 2000-2009.Det faktum att en apa vann aktie SM 1993, framför professionella placerare, visar att aktiekurser är slumpmässiga. Varför ska en investerare då lita på att en förvaltare är bättre på att utvärdera marknaden och dess placeringsmöjligheter än andra?Metod: En kvantitativ metod har använts i uppsatsen, där data har erhållits från Morningstar och SIX Telekurs. Det insamlade materialet har bearbetats i Microsoft Excel för att beräkna fondernas avkastning och prestationsmått.

Purpose: Aims of this paper is to evaluate a comparative study between China and Russia funds in respect of the risks and returns. We also want to examine what has affected the funds in their respective domestic stock market.                                                            Method: The study is based on qualitative methodology to complement the quantitative survey by first gathering of secondary data from Morningstar, and fund manager´s stories on fund and banking companies' websites.  Primary data is conducted by the interview with fund manager. The sample consists of all land funds for China and Russia has found more than 10 years on the stock market.Results and Conclusion: The survey shows that China funds will generate better in decline than Russia Funds in both return and risk-adjusted Sharpe ratio. Because the China funds had better risk diversification and its holdings spread across different industry area while Russia funds is more directed towards oil and gas industry.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine whether hedge funds generate higher risk-adjusted returns than traditional managed funds in Sweden.Methodology: This study was based on quantitative data about the funds historical returns. The funds historical returns were taken from the database Morningstar and the risk-free rate from the Swedish central bank. Random samples of 36 funds have been divided into three portfolios in the form of a hedge fund portfolio, stock portfolio and mix fund portfolio.Result & Conclusion: The study concluded that the stock portfolio has shown the highest average yield for the study period where all portfolios below market index. Hedge fund portfolio has achieved the highest risk-adjusted return calculated by the portfolios Sharpe Ratio. Of all hedge strategies, arbitrage had the highest average return and risk-adjusted returns..

 Problem: For what type of investors are index funds versus exchange-traded index funds best suited?Objective: The purpose of the paper is to determine how an index fund or an exchange-traded index fund (ETF) suits different types of investors with different requirements in terms of time frame, investment size and purpose of investment. The comparison is based on fees and trade practicality. This is going to describe the advantages and disadvantages with the two different financial instruments.Method: The study is a comparative study using two methods; one of which is a case study, the other is a qualitative interview. The case study focuses on fees and is made on an exchange traded fund (XACT OMXS30) and a simple equity index fund (Erik Pensér equity enhanced index).

In this paper Swedish hedge funds and strategies are discussed and analysed. These new financial forms seem to draw recently a huge attention both in media, press and the academic world. The fact is that hedge funds have existed already for a long time but it is still known too little about them. After the introduction of hedge funds, different asset pricing models are discussed including the most basic of all ? CAPM and further Fama and French three factor model as well as the expanding model with conditioning approach.

There are various investments to suit different investors, what affects the investor is the risk he/she takes with the investment and also the awareness  the investor has. According to different theories a higher risk gives even a higher yield to compensate for the extra risk the investor takes.In this paper, we discuss and compare two different forms of savings, Swedish closed-end funds and Swedish Mutual funds to examine what alternative that generates highest returns in relation to the risk.To help, we use different evaluation measures that adjusts the different investments risk so that you can compare how well the investments have performed regardless of the risk they have. This will give us an answer about what investment form that have performed the best between 2002.01.01-20010.12.31. Five Sweden Mutual funds and five closed-end funds have been selected to participate in the survey.To evaluate this, it is primarily quantitative data, analyzed in the evaluation measures. The results obtained in the survey show that Swedish closed-end funds have performed far better during the selected time period.