STOCK ANALYSIS AND INVESTMENT PROJECT

You are an "analyst" working for TRUST COMPANY XYZ.  Your assignment is to review a current stock holding for the company and present your conclusions to the firm's investment committee.

STEP ONE - You must determine a stock to review. You must send your selected company to the instructor before the second meeting of the class. The company must be traded on the NYSE (it cannot be an ADR) and it must have a market capitalization of at least $5 billion. 

This is a10 week exercise. You are required to:

1- Obtain daily (as of market close Fridays) market price data for the selected stock for the period between Jan 1, 2012 through Friday, April 28, 2017 (the latest).You may use Yahoo Finance web site.

2- Obtain daily S&P 500 market index data for the same period

3- Create an excel spread sheet and insert your data into tables. Calculate all the total returns on the stock and the market. Once you obtain the past years data, you may want to continue the process on a weekly basis, and follow the trends.

4- Follow the selected stock price data for the next 10 weeks until April 28, 2017th. At that time you assume you close the account and sell short all the stock and the market index.

5- Calculate, mean, variance, covariance, STD, and the beta of the stock. Interpret these results in very brief sentences.

6- Create charts to show the market and price movements.

7- Using the dividend discount and P/E models, calculate an expected value for the select stock.

8- Using the estimates you have obtained make a BUY/SELL/HOLD recommendations backed up by your analysis of the economy, the sector and the specific stock.

9- Show how the numbers change for select periods (you choose).

10- Plot the efficient frontier. Provide any other charts and graphs that you think may enhance your report.

You have a stock analysis report.

STEP TWO - An outline of your report must be submitted to the instructor by the. This should be a detailed outline with the core topics you need to cover and your initial thoughts about these topics.  General economy, sector, and the company data.

You will be working on your own. However, I encourage you to meet frequently with your class mates. Try to combine the findings on each stock, and the industry, and using your creativity, provide an overall assessment of the sector group and the stocks and make a final statement (a group statement) whether this randomly selected portfolio will be a successful one, and how it can be improved.

Write no more than 2-3 pages, supported by any number of tables, charts and graphs.

STEP THREE--   Submit your final report on the date indicated above. Suppose that your report will be reviewed by the investment committee, me and your peers, and you will be responsible for supporting your work and recommendations. 

Suggested Template for Your Investment Analysis Project Final Report -

Use the following as guidance in preparing your report.

Your final report should be short, preferably no longer than 2-3 pages, double-spaced, using font size 12 (you may append as many exhibits (tables, charts) as you would like - these are not included in the total page count).

The report should include the following five sections:

1) a discussion of your general investment strategy (i.e. explain why a given sector was selected) and asset allocation decision in one paragraph. If your group has decided to allocate funds equally, explain;

2) a maximum one half page analysis of each of the stocks (or another security) that you selected;

3) a section dealing with performance attribution (i.e. what market benchmark(s) did you select to measure your performance against, and a brief analysis of why your selections outperformed or underperformed this benchmark); and

4) any suggested changes to your strategy based on your experience from the first six months of trading (and ideas learned from the course) and your outlook for the market.

It will be based on how carefully you have thought out your arguments leading to your asset allocation strategy and your security selections, the general effort you put into managing the portfolio, and the quality of your final report.

Attachment:- Assignment Files.rar