CAPITAL ASSET PRICING MODEL (CAPM) is an equilibrium model which describes the pricing of assets, as well as derivatives. The model concludes that the expected return of an asset (or derivative) equals the riskless return plus a measure of the assets non-diversiable risk ("beta") times the market-wide risk premium (excess expected return of the market portfolio over the riskless return). That is: expected security return = riskless return + beta x (expected market risk premium). It concludes that only the risk which cannot be diversified away by holding a well-diversified portfolio (e.g. the market portfolio) will affect the market price of the asset. This risk is called systematic risk, while risk that can be diversified away is called diversifiable risk (or "nonsystematic risk"). Unfortunately, The CAPM is more difficult to implement in practice than the binomial option pricing model or the Black-Scholes formula because to price an asset it requires measurement of the assets expected return and its beta. But, on the other hand, it also attempts to answer a more difficult question: The binomial option pricing model or the Black-Scholes formula asks what is the value of a derivative relative to the concurrent value of its underlying asset. The CAPM asks what is the value of an asset (or derivative) relative to the return of the market portfolio. Because of this, the option models are often referred to as "relative" valuation models, while the CAPM is considered an "absolute" valuation model. William Sharpe won the Nobel Prize in Economics principally for his role in the development of the CAPM.
DUAL DATE is when a major event comes to the auditor's attention between the report date and issuance of the report; the financial statements may include the event as an adjustment or disclosure. The auditor dual dates the audit report (as of the end of workpaper review, except footnote XX, which is dated later).
VISUAL-FIT METHOD is a cost estimation method where an analyst examines a cost by plotting points on a graph (called a scatter diagram) and places a line through the points to yield a cost function. This method is more objective than the account-classification method, but it is still lacking because two cost analysts could (and likely would) visually fit different lines. Such an approach is useful, though, because it helps spot non-representative data points, or outliers.
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