Choose a publicly traded company that interests you. If you don't know how to choose a company, think of IBM, DELL computer, Nike, Apple computer, GM, Ford, Nokia, Home Depot, and on and on. Think of the companies that make things you use everyday. Choose one from them.

Part A.
Go to COMPUSTAT Research Insights, Reuter's, Thomson Financial Service, or Bloomberg Financial (E-Trade Financial Learning Center has them all) or any other financial database such as Yahoo Finance to download the historical closing prices (five years) of your company on the monthly basis (twelve data points a year).

Part B.
Based on the financial statements of the latest available annual report, calculate the following financial ratios using only one year data. If the ratios are not available, please explain why. For example, Citibank doesn't have inventory because it's a financial company.

(Please show your calculation)

Current ratio
Quick ratio
Fixed assets turnover
Total assets turnover
Total debt to total assets
Profit margin on sales
Return on total assets
Return on common equity
Price/earnings ratio
Market/book ratio

The final report should include a chart of monthly stock price movements described in part A and the financial ratios in part B above.

Write a report to explain what you did for Part A and Part B. Based on the materials provided in the annual report and business news from The Wall Street Journal, as well as the financial information from any other sources, such as Datastream, Reuters, Bloomberg Financial, or Yahoo Finance, explain as much as you can the movement of your stock during the last twelve months. Your report should start with a description of the business and the status of financial condition such as Line of business, Competitive positions, and Profitability History (going back five years). Do not turn in a sloppy, rapidly completed report. All papers should have a title page, a table of contents, a statement of purpose, footnotes or endnotes, or a bibliography or reference. The due date for submitting your project is the last date of the class. You will use Assignment manager to submit your project. As for the number of pages, there is no required page length. Remember that I will prefer to see a project that's clear and to the point with fewer number of pages.

To submit your paper, go to "Assignments" then "Project Submission." Please copy and paste the graph file to the word file.

Note: Turnitin Assignment Service on Blackboard will be used to evaluate your paper submission. If Turnitin evaluation indicates 75% or more of the text in your paper matches something already in the Turnitin database, then your paper will automatically receive a grade of zero. Please make sure you will document the secondary sources in your paper to prevent plagiarism.

Skills to Learn from this project: Financial data colleting, analysis, and presentation.