But even in this market, selling their house might not have worked out so smoothly if it hadn't been correctly priced, Mr. Leonardi said.

A Franklin spokesman declined to comment on why the fund did not move; he would say only that it was being priced correctly.

"It's a fair-price market and the house that is priced correctly, we found, sells without any difficulty."

All the correctly priced securities are plotted on the SML.

"If a house is priced correctly, we usually have an accepted offer within 30 days," she said.

In Highcliffe, if properties are correctly priced, they should generate interest straight away in 2009.

"On any level, if a house is priced correctly, it will sell quickly," he said.

Value Investors see securities as either priced correctly, under-priced, or over-priced.

Bank loans, he said, "should just be correctly priced."

MPT derives the required expected return for a correctly priced asset in this context.