Background: Mutual funds have become an important part of the Swedish deposit market. Savings in mutual funds add up to almost 20 percent of the households'assets. When the pension reform is carried out all employees are going to have savings both in mutual and bond funds. But only if the fund overperforms the market it is worth investing. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore if Swedish mutual funds have generated higher returns than market portfolio in the late nineties.

Purpose: The study examines the risk a rising from the acquisition of shares, and its relation to the expected return. We would like to see how a high-risk portfolio is related to a low-risk portfolio. Although studying the portfolios annual performance.Theory: The theories that have been used in the study are, Capital asset pricing model, CAPM and portfolio theory.Method: The study is based on a quantitative method, the time interval is from 2008 to 2010.The annual reports, historical stock prices for companies and the index are used to perform calculations based on the essay theories.Conclusion: The beta value has positive liner correlation with the expected return. When there are bad times in the world, the companies are negatively affected regardless of industry. The Portfolios developed in the same direction during the time period..

This study explores whether environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues affect the monetary value of a company.The samples used in this study have been taken from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in South Africa. Since 2010, JSE have been categorizing companies using the King Code III criteria to establish a Socially Responsible Investment index (SRI index). Companies that fulfill the required number of criteria are classified as 'best performers' using the SRI index.  In this study the monetary value of a random sample of 'best performers' has been compared to the monetary value of a random sample of companies without an SRI index evaluation.This study found that companies without a SRI index have a higher unique risk, which means a lower stock price with a higher dividend yield. Companies with an SRI index evaluation have a lower unique risk, which means a higher stock price and lower dividend yield. In conclusion, this study shows that SRI adjusted companies have an enhanced monetary value in comparison to non- SRI adjusted companies..

Purpose: The study examines the risk a rising from the acquisition of shares, and its relation to the expected return. We would like to see how a high-risk portfolio is related to a low-risk portfolio. Although studying the portfolios annual performance.Theory: The theories that have been used in the study are, Capital asset pricing model, CAPM and portfolio theory.Method: The study is based on a quantitative method, the time interval is from 2008 to 2010.The annual reports, historical stock prices for companies and the index are used to perform calculations based on the essay theories.Conclusion: The beta value has positive liner correlation with the expected return. When there are bad times in the world, the companies are negatively affected regardless of industry. The Portfolios developed in the same direction during the time period..

The report is a result of a bachelor thesis at the department of business administration, School of Business, Economics and Law, Gothenburg University, spring term 2008. The study examines the potential return of Swedish Venture Capital firms? Cleantech investments, carried out in 2006 and 2007, compared to the return on their other investments.The study has identified a number of factors affecting the return. These have been classified within three areas: the characteristics of the Venture Capital investment, the characteristics of the Venture Capital firm and the market potential for Cleantech. The impacts on potential return for these factors are investigated by means of an interview survey with 18 Swedish Venture Capital firm covering 45 investments in Cleantech.Our research indicates a worse potential return on Cleantech investments compared to other investments.

Bakgrund: De flesta svenskarna sparar i form av värdepapper för att investera sina pengar och få en avkastning. Vilket placeringsalternativ ska de välja mellan investering i traditionella eller speciella fonder? De traditionella fonderna har en relativ avkastning och en stor risk, medan de speciella eller hedgefonderna har en lägre risk och en absolut positiv avkastning oavsett marknadsläge.I denna studie kommer att undersökas om hedgefonders avkastningsmönster är trovärdig, och om deras målsättning har uppnåtts under åtta års period.Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka om det finns ett samband mellan olika svenska hedgefonders investeringsstrategier och avkastningsmönster samt undersöka hur dessa hedgefonder skiljer sig från de traditionella fonderna och marknadsindexet. Delsyftet är att studera två olika perioder och urskilja hur fonderna presterar under hög respektive låg konjunktur läge.Metod: Studien är baserad på forskningsstrategin kvantitativa metoden. Sekundär data i form av historiska avkastningssiffror för åttaårsperiod är avhämtad.

To understand the motives, and perhaps more importantly the barriers, for farmers to convert from conventional to organic farming is of great interest for policy makers as well as for academics. In Sweden and in other EU countries, proposed targets of the area in organic farmland have failed to be reached in spite of different kinds of policy measures. Most studies agree that the average profitability seems to be comparable to or better in organic than in conventional farming. This would indicate that there must be other factors of importance which can explain the low particiapation rate. A higher perceived risk in organic farming with respect to yield and price is frequently brought up as a potential explanation within a qualitative framework.

Background: Operating on the stock market is associated with risks. If a particular asset is not traded with the same frequency as the average market asset, this particular asset is exposed to a liquidity risk. It means that the investor might not be able to sell the asset at a desired time without incurring expensive transaction costs. The query is whether or not the investor is compensated with a liquidity premium for bearing the extra risk. Earlier studies on the Stockholm Stock Exchange have failed to prove that there is a relation between stock return and liquidity.

Purpose:        The intention of this study is to distinguish if there is a correlation between mutual funds administration fee and their return. The study will also observe if there is a difference regarding the return between active and passive management fees.Method:        The study is founded on a deductive approach because the study is based on existing theories. Quantitative research based on statistical data has been used. A correlation analysis has been applied to determine if there is a correlation between the chosen variables.Conclusion:   The conclusion of the study is that active management of funds mainly do not give a higher return than passive management funds. Neither is the administration fee dependent on the risk a fund has..

This thesis studies the relationship between risk and the first day returns of Initial Public Offerings (IPO) by assessing the risk of each issuing company with a risk model that combine financial key ratios of importance. The study is based on 92 IPO?s that were made on the Stockholm OMX stock exchange during the period of 1997-2009. The point of departure was to investigate if the uncertainty created by the asymmetric information between investors and the issuing firm could be captured by predicting the possibility of failure in the future. This has been studied by applying Skogsvik?s probability of failure model on the 92 issuing firms.

The first four AP-funds have a well-diversified Swedish portfolio, which is managed in similar way as the largest Swedish bank funds. Up until today, there has not been any comparable study that focuses specifically on this part of the AP-funds. Our aim is two-folded; First we will look at how well the AP-funds have managed their Swedish assets compared with Swedish funds of the four largest banks in Sweden during 2002-2006. This will be done by looking at some important key ratios and both absolute and active return. Secondly we will present a descriptive analysis of the management structure within the respective organisations, to be able to draw conclusions regarding the possible deviations in investment return.

Recently, the selections of ethical funds are increased; at the same time investors with social and moral preferences have increased in the capital market. There are currently debates on whether ethical funds perform better or worse than funds without ethical criteria. This also involves a vivid discussion on whether investors know about the consequences of investing in ethical funds. Therefore, this study involves theories about the rationality and decision theory, in addition to what mainly control the investment decisions. The study also discusses portfolio theory since this is one of the underlying theories behind fund management and its development.The purpose of this study is to explain if ethical limitations in the selection of securities affect risk and return in the fund portfolio.

This paper investigates the compensation for risk in the context of the Swedish stock market with a special focus on downside risk. Using daily market data collected from the A-list of the Stockholm Stock Exchange between the years 1983 and 2005 the purpose is to answer the question whether Swedish investors are compensated for holding stocks with high downside risk, measured as downside beta. Using panel data analysis it is shown, in accordance with most previous evidence in international research, firstly that stocks with high beta values on average experience higher returns than stocks with low beta values, and secondly that stocks with high downside beta values experience higher returns than stocks with high beta values in general. On the other hand, cross-sectional regression methodology using a bivariate regression approach shows that downside beta does not explain excess returns very well. Instead, regression analysis suggest that high upside beta does a much better job in explaining excess return over this time period compared to downside beta.

This thesis studies the stock price reaction around 68 announcements of special dividends and share redemptions on the Swedish stock market between the years of 2003 and 2007. We show that for the Swedish private investor, the tax effect of a share redemption is lower than that of a special dividend. Moreover, a share redemption could be interpreted as a signal of undervaluation. These two factors lead us to assume that the stock market would react more positively in connection to the announcement of a share redemption. We test this hypothesis through an analysis of the risk-adjusted abnormal return for the observations in the sample.

Vattenfall hedge its future electricity production in order to decrease fluctuations in theresult. Hedging can in a simplified way be described as selling the future electricity deliveriesin long-term contracts so that the future price of the delivery becomes fixed. The contractsused are electricity forwards traded at the Nordic electricity market Nord Pool. Animbalance between buyers and sellers can lead to a situation where the forward price notequals the expected spot price. The difference between the forward price and the expectedspot price is referred to as the market risk premium.