According to the Capital Asset Pricing Model a highly risk averse investor should put some of her money in early-stage biotech companies.

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According to the Capital Asset Pricing Model a highly risk averse investor should put some of her money in early-stage biotech companies.

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

The question asks: According to the Capital Asset Pricing Model a highly risk averse investor should put some of her money in early-stage biotech companies.

First, note that the provided data lacks answer options. Without the listed choices, we cannot dissect each alternative as requested. Nevertheless, we can reason about the statement in light of CAPM.

Under the CAPM framework, an asset’s expected return is determined by its systematic risk, captured by beta, relative to the market. Assets with high beta have higher expected returns to compensate for bearing more market-related risk. However, CAPM does not prescribe a preference rule for individual investors; it describes the relationship between risk and expected return and the composition of the efficient market portfolio.

In practice, early-stage biotech investments typically exhibit very high risk and high idiosyncratic (unsystematic) risk due to factors like clinical trial outcomes, regulatory approvals, and scientific uncertainty. Much of this risk can be diversifiable through holding a broad, diversified portfolio. A highly risk-averse investor is usually inclined to minimize risk, which, under CAPM principles, translates to seeking assets with lower beta or opting for the risk-free asset or a well-diversified portfolio with lower systematic risk rather than concentrating in a high-beta, high-uncertainty sector.

Because CAPM emphasizes compensation for systematic risk (beta) and does not reward taking on high idiosyncratic risk without diversification benefits, the statement that a highly risk-averse investor should allocate funds to early-stage biotech is inconsistent with CAPM-based intuition.

Even in contexts where investors can tolerate some risk, CAPM would still require considering the asset’s beta and its role in the overall market portfolio. High-beta, high-uncertainty assets do not automatically align with a highly risk-averse objective, unless the investor has a non-standard utility or diversification constraints that alter the traditional CAPM implications.

In summary, given CAPM principles, a highly risk-averse investor would not be expected to deliberately allocate capital to early-stage biotech, as such investments tend to carry substantial non-systematic risk and high volatility relative to the market, which conflicts with the goal of minimizing risk for a risk-averse investor.

Note: If the original question included multiple-choice options, we would evaluate each option against CAPM logic, identifying why a claim contradicts the model’s focus on systematic risk and market portfolio diversification. In the absence of options, we base the conclusion on standard CAPM reasoning and typical risk characteristics of early-stage biotech investments.

IFEPIA7022_001_2025_3 - Economics of Finance EOF in-class Quiz 10-7-25

According to the Capital Asset Pricing Model a highly risk averse investor should put some of her money in early-stage biotech companies.

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