Question: Pick a publicly traded company and begin following their stock online. There are plenty of places to do this, such as Google Finance, using the iPhones's stock application or any other stock related app. You should monitor the changes daily and if something significant happens, research why.

- You should also view the financial statements of your organization. This again can be done in a variety of ways, including the company's website, Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, etc.

- You should begin monitoring this the first week of class. There is no specific length requirement, but the paper should be long enough to substantially cover all of the following points:

- What is your company? What industry is it in?

- How has the stock price fluctuated over the last month and a half?

- What has caused these fluctuations?

- What financial ratios can you calculate to give me a good insight into how strong your company is? Calculate and explain a minimum of 3 ratios for the most current year and the previous year and explain the improvements or shortcomings.

- How does your company stack up to other companies in the industry? You may want to calculate some ratios of their main competitor to

- provide some additional context on their performance.

- Is the company in a good financial state? How do you know?

- How can they improve their state?

- What do you think the future holds for the company?

Be sure to thoroughly cover all of these points. Do not simply answer the questions. You must provide context, data and rationale.

*Again, there are no set requirements on terms of page count... However, experience has shown that these papers tend to be approximately 3 single spaced pages, including tables displaying ratios/data, etc.

You should also include a separate page citing any sources used.

Format: Word or PDF, single spaced with clear section headers