This will begin the first week of class and include activity up through and including the last Friday of class.

This assignment has been developed to foster your reading habits of financial periodicals and to help you keep up with current business activities. You are to choose a corporation of interest to you.This assignment has been developed to foster your reading habits of financial periodicals and to help you keep up with current business activities. You are to choose a corporation of interest to you. Please clear your choices with me as duplicates will not be allowed. You will be tracking the stock price of the corporation throughout the semester (stock prices as of every Friday, rather than daily, are fine).This will begin the first week of class and include activity up through and including the last Friday of class.You will see that your stock’s price is not always consistent. There are several reasons for that, such as:

• Interest rate changes
• Unemployment news
• Quarterly earnings reports
• Other various reasons

Your paper will include:

• A graph showing weekly analysis of the change in the price of your stock. You should look at the stock’s price each week and prepare some commentary on any effects that you see for the term as a whole. Why did the changes occur? Summarize those changes for your paper
• A weekly analysis of the change in the S&P 500. Sometimes the changes affecting your stock will be something that all stocks are experiencing. Prepare your analysis in the same way as you will for your corporation’s stock price
• A description of the major industry your corporation is in and its major competitors. Are things happening in this industry that are affecting all the companies within it?
• The recent history of successes and failures the corporation has experienced (new products, worker strikes, mergers, opening of foreign markets, etc.)
• Predictions of management for the future
• Anything else that you feel may have affected the stock’s price

Use sources such as smartmoney.com, Yahoo Finance, or MSN Finance to answer the following questions in your paper:

• How many employees does the company have?
• What percent of shares are owned by insiders? Institutions?
• Does it appear that insiders have primarily been buying or selling shares?
• What is the company’s beta?
• What is the company’s gross margin?
• What is the company’s net margin?
• What is the company’s return on common equity?
• What is the company’s current ratio?
• What is the company’s quick ratio?
• What is the company’s long-term debt to equity?
• Which companies are listed as competitors?