What is the 'Capital Asset Pricing Model - CAPM'?

Modified on Thu, 05 Jul 2018 at 04:06 PM

The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is a model that describes the relationship between systematic risk and expected return for assets, particularly stocks. CAPM is widely used throughout finance for the pricing of risky securities, generating expected returns for assets given the risk of those assets and calculating costs of capital.


BREAKING DOWN 'Capital Asset Pricing Model - CAPM'

The formula for calculating the expected return of an asset given its risk is as follows:

Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM)

The general idea behind CAPM is that investors need to be compensated in two ways: time value of money and risk. The time value of money is represented by the risk-free (rf) rate in the formula and compensates the investors for placing money in any investment over a period of time. The risk-free rate is customarily the yield on government bonds like U.S. Treasuries.


Source : Investopedia

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