In 2018, Apple Inc. has massive liquid assets that generate a high interest rate of 8.58%. The cash, cash equivalents is $66,301 million, the short-term debt and current portion of long-term debt are $20,748 million, the long-term debt is $93,735 million. The average interest paid on debt is 2.83%. If we view the firm as proceeding to build up cash reserves while maintaining the amount of debt. What is the implied average cost of debt (assume the amount of net debt is unchanged from 2017 to 2018)

Rate of return douglas keel, a financial analyst for orange industries, wishes to estimate the rate of return for two similar-risk investments, x and y. douglas's research indicates that the immediate past returns will serve as reasonable estimates of future returns. a year earlier, investment x had a market value of $27 comma 000; and investment y had a market value of $46 comma 000. during the year, investment x generated cash flow of $2 comma 025 and investment y generated cash flow of $ 6 comma 770. the current market values of investments x and y are $28 comma 582 and $46 comma 000, respectively. a. calculate the expected rate of return on investments x and y using the most recent year's data. b. assuming that the two investments are equally risky, which one should douglas recommend? why?