An investor holding a portfolio concentrated in fixed-rate corporate and municipal bonds seeks to mitigate the impact of unexpected long-term inflation on the portfolio's real purchasing power. To achieve this goal, the investor expands the portfolio from 15 bond holdings to over 300 distinct bond issues spanning multiple industries and geographic regions, while maintaining the same fixed-income asset allocation. Which of the following statements best evaluates the effectiveness of this strategy?
- The strategy fails to mitigate purchasing power risk because inflation is a systematic risk that erodes the real purchasing power of fixed coupon payments regardless of issuer diversification.Cevap
- BThe strategy successfully eliminates purchasing power risk because broad diversification across 300 different issuers neutralizes microeconomic inflation shocks across sectors.
- CThe strategy converts systematic purchasing power risk into non-systematic credit risk, which can then be offset through sovereign yield guarantees.
- DThe strategy reduces purchasing power risk because distributing cash flows across hundreds of coupon dates forces secondary market bond prices to rise when market yields increase.
Cevap
The strategy fails to mitigate purchasing power risk because inflation is a systematic risk that erodes the real purchasing power of fixed coupon payments regardless of issuer diversification.
The correct answer accurately identifies that purchasing power (inflation) risk is a systematic risk inherent to fixed-income investments. Because inflation reduces the real value of fixed cash flows across the entire economy, spreading investments among 300 different bond issuers does not insulate the investor from purchasing power loss.
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Anahtar Kavram
Systematic risks (such as market, interest rate, purchasing power/inflation, and currency risk) affect the entire market or asset class and cannot be eliminated through portfolio diversification.