Fin 404 Investments
Due Date: Week 7
Prof. Ho
Spring II, 2015
Objectives:
· Become familiar with the Wall Street Journal and the Internet financial pages.
· Learn how to select mutual funds, bonds, and stocks.
· Understand tracking and calculating the performance of mutual funds, bonds, stocks and the stock market indexes over the holding period.
· Observe the effects of diversification and assess the risk of investing.
· Achieve early financially independence.
Implementation:
This project is a group effort. You should have 3 students in a group. The initial funding for your account is $100,000. You will construct three portfolios as follows:
Portfolio 1: Four Mutual Funds ($10,000 each) $40,000
Portfolio 2: Corporate AA or AAA rated bonds $10,000
Portfolio 3: Five Individual Stocks $50,000
Total: $100,000
Portfolio 1: You should include a stock fund, a bond fund, an international stock fund,
and a money market fund in your mutual fund portfolio.
Portfolio 2: You should invest only in high graded corporate bonds. Do not choose high
yield (junk) bonds.
Portfolio 3: There is no requirement for equal dollar amount investment or number of
shares in your stock portfolio.
Go to yahoo.com, click finance, and click my portfolio to create your own portfolios. You can also use Excel Spread Sheets to track stock prices daily and performance of each portfolio weekly.
Purposes:
· Investing in mutual funds will allow you to compare the volatility and performance of your own portfolios to a professionally managed selection of securities.
· The purchase of corporate bonds will show the effects of interest rates.
· The purchase of individual stocks will help you understand the risk and reward of investing in the stock market, and the portfolio development will help you understand the benefits of diversification.
Assumptions
· The price of each stock is determined at the close of each trading day as reported in the Wall Street Journal.
· Fractional shares may be purchased.
· Taxes do not apply.
· Individual stocks may be bought and sold during holding period.
· There are no transaction costs.
Requirements
· The time horizon of your investment project is from _________to ___________
(cover at least 4 weeks)
· Track the price per share of individual stocks and determine the value of your portfolio each Friday (end of closing day).
· Liquidate all three portfolios at the end of Week Four.
· Calculate annual holding period return and annual holding period yield (see textbook/PPT slides for formulae)
Written Analysis
See next page (Table of Contents) for the required sections of your paper. You can include more sections if you like. Please go to www.apa.org for paper format.
First Page: Include the title, team members, and Mercer University.
Second page: Table of Contents.
References: Have at least 5 references.
Appendixes: Place data sheets, graphs, and tables at the end of your paper.
Table of Contents
· Executive Summary
II. Statement of Purpose
III. Estimate of the Economic Factors Which Form the Environment for the Selection
Of Your Portfolios.
VI. Methods of Your Investment Selections
· Comment briefly on each mutual fund, each bond and each stock in your portfolios. At a minimum, your comments should include:
` 1. Mutual Funds
Types of funds, returns, types of risk and outlook, etc.
2. Bonds
Types of bonds, returns, risk, and ratings, etc.
3. Stocks
Types of stocks, returns, dividends, earnings, P/E, risk, and outlook
· Consideration of diversification and discussion of correlations.
C. Apply investment models. (see chapters 7 and 8)
C. Other factors, if any.
· Weekly performance of your mutual fund portfolio relative to the bench marks.
· Briefly discuss the volatility and performance
· Draw graphs to support your narrative analysis.
VI. Weekly performance of your bond portfolio relative to the bond market.
· Briefly discuss the volatility and performance.
· Draw graphs to support your narrative analysis.
VII. Weekly performance of each of your five single stock investment relative to the
stock market.
· Briefly discuss the volatility and performance.
· Draw graphs to support your narrative analysis.
VIII. Lessons learned for “next time”.
References (At least 5 sources)
Appendixes (data sheets, graphs, and tables, etc.)
FIN404
Portfolio Investment Project
Prof. Ho
Spring II, 2015
Team # _______
Student Email Phone Number
1. _____________________________________________________________________
2._______________________________________________________________________
3._______________________________________________________________________
Please submit this page no later than week 2.