need help with financial market home work

need help with financial market home work

You need to use a spreadsheet for this assignment. However the submitted script

must be a printed-out paper copy. You must explain how you have derived your

answers; simply submitting a spreadsheet printout of numbers will receive very

little credit. An electronic copy of an Excel file will not be accepted.

Questions: Answer all questions.

All rates should be calculated to 3 decimal places in % (e.g. 1.234%), the discount factors to

5 decimal places (e.g. 0.98765), and the bond prices to 3 decimal places (e.g. 99.999).

You are given the following yields-to-maturity for semi-annually coupon paying Treasury

Bonds on 31st December 2007 and 31st December 2008:

Term
0.5yr
1yr
2yr
3yr
5yr
7yr
10yr

31 Dec 2007
3.49%
3.34%
3.05%
3.07%
3.45%
3.70%
4.04%

31 Dec 2008
0.27%
0.37%
0.76%
1.00%
1.55%
1.87%
2.25%

(1) Using linear interpolation to estimate any other required rates, find the discount factors

D(t) for t = 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, …, 10.0 for both dates.

(2) From your answers to (1), calculate the price of a constant-maturity 3-year semi-annual

coupon bond1 with an annual coupon rate of 3% and the face value 100, for both 31

December 2007 and 31 December 2008. Hence analyse the price change.

(3) Again from your answers to (1), find the 6-month forward rates f(t,t+½) for t = 0.5, 1.0,

1.5, … , 9.5 for both dates.2 (See Appendix for the explanation for forward rates.)

You are also given the following historical data on the spot 6-month rate:

Date
31/12/07 30/06/08
31/12/08
30/06/09
31/12/09

6m Rate
3.49% 2.17%
0.27%
0.35%
0.20%

30/06/10 31/12/10
30/06/11
30/12/11
29/06/12 31/12/12

0.22% 0.19%
0.10%
0.06%
0.16%
0.11%

(4) Using a graph, comment on how well the market predicted the future moves of the spot

6-month rate on both dates.

(5) In general, are forward rates a good predictor of future interest rates? Briefly discuss.