Friendly Finances & Loans

Analyses that deal with the integration of high-yielding instruments in bond portfolios must take into account the market inefficiencies mentioned above. Otherwise, false conclusions cannot be ruled out. Because of the biased correlations between individual bonds, historical estimates of the volatility of high-yield indices are too low. Generally, this causes suboptimal portfolio weights that are [...]

Levy (1992) points out that lower partial moments of first order are consistent with second-order stochastic dominance. The concept of stochastic dominance has several important advantages. It requires no distributional assumptions, takes all the moments of the return distributions into account and requires only very mild assumptions about investor behavior. With respect to the comparison [...]

Some of the most useful practical techniques to improve profitability are as follows: Focus decision-making on the most profitable areas. Concentrating on products and services with the best margin will protect or enhance profitability. This may involve redirecting sales and advertising activities. Decide how to deal with the least profitable products. These often drift, with [...]

Harley-Davidson, a motorcycle manufacturer, hit hard times during the late 1970s that resulted in a management buy-out in 1981. At this point, senior managers visited Honda’s Marysville, Ohio, motorcycle facility. The contrast with their own facility was dramatic in terms of layout, production flow, efficiency and inventory management. Harley’s managers concluded that if they were [...]

For decades, leading Japanese companies have directed much of their cost-management efforts towards muda or waste elimination. This involves techniques such as process analysis, mapping and re-engineering, which are important parts of operational decision-making. The value of process analysis is that it enables waste to be identified and eliminated and costs to be reduced by [...]