need help

· Good websites for this include:

· Bloomberg.com (Bloomberg.com)

· Yahoo Finance (finance.yahoo.com)

· CNN Money (money.cnn.com)

· The company website might also have their stock price on a daily basis

· Check the stock price daily if you like, but no less frequently than once a week is recommended

· Keep track of the price as you will have to graph the price over the period of the course

Prepare a written report of no more than 5-pages

· A brief biography or history of the company should be included.

· Brief means 2 or 3 paragraphs. These are well known companies and you do not have to go into a lot of detail. Just summarize when they started, what they make or do, their size, and something about their industry.

· If your report includes 2 or 3 pages of history it will be downgraded accordingly.

· The report must include a graph of the stocks movement. I have included an example below.

· If the stock “significantly” increases or decreases in price you should research the reason for this movement. A significant change in a stock’s price is typically commented on by stock analysts. “Significant” changes to a stock price are subjective, use your best judgment, but if the stock goes up or down by 2% or more on any given day this is usually commented on.

· Your comments on the stock movement should be researched and presented in bullet points by date. You do not have to follow APA formatting but you do need to briefly note your source material. See example below.

· Typical reasons for stock movement may include:

· Earnings report release. Publicly traded companies have to comment on their profitability, typically once each quarter. When the earnings announcement is made the stock will typically go up (if earnings are better than expected), or down (if earnings are less than projected), and occasionally stay the same (if earnings met the expectation). If there is an earnings release you should note this on the paper and discuss the movement of the stock on that day.

· Earnings estimate is released

· New product announcement

· Change in management

· Buying another company

· Selling a division

· Announcing a change to the dividends

· Poor publicity over a lawsuit

· A recall notice for a product

The conclusion of the paper will be a recommendation to Buy more stock, Hold the stock you have, or Sell the stock you have. This recommendation must be justified.

This is an example of a graph showing the movement of the stock price. If you want to include a second line showing the DJIA or S&P 500 you will get a better score. Comments for this graph might look like this:

· April 13: Stock declined by 1.73% to $210.17 primarily due to the overall decline of the market that day. The DJIA went down 2.5% for the day on news of Saudi Arabia attacks on Yemen and weak employment numbers in the US (Reuters website 4/13/15).

· April 27: Stock has increased to by 1.70% to $213.75 since April 13 in anticipation of the earnings report scheduled for May 1, 2015. Also the market rebounded recently due to the Fed hinting that interest rates will likely not increase until September (Google News 4/27/15).

· May 1, 2015: Stock increased by 3.71% to $221.67 on the better than expected earnings report. The market had expected a 3% increase in net earnings and the company’s quarterly profit rose by 5.6%. (Company website and Bloomberg.com).

· May 8, 2015: Stock went down by 1.42% today to $219.33, some analyst said shareholders are taking profits from recent increase. Also it appears to some analysts that the stock at $220 is properly valued and there may be a ceiling at that level.

· May 22, 2015: Stock dipped by 1.05% to $217.28 as the market continues to retreat due to poor economic indicators.

· June 5, 2015: Stock has been on a slight growth spurt increasing by 1.63% to $220.83 based on a positive review of their W9-XLT product by Consumer Reports. It will be interesting to see if the stock can remain above $220.

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