Evaluate various techniques used to analyze stocks and the stock market

.Illustrate the basic types of securities and financial markets as well as how trading in those markets is conducted;
2.Demonstrate efficiency of portfolio diversification;
3.Construct and use the security market line;
4.Analyze the choices to be made in an actively managed bond portfolio;
5.Evaluate various techniques used to analyze stocks and the stock market;
6.Calculate values of different types of derivative instruments;
7.Apply international investment strategies advantageously;
8.Integrate basic concepts from prior pre-requisite courses:
a.Financial Statement Analysis;
b.Time value of money;
c.Risk & Return analysis.

A1.Project: A project will be assigned during the semester which will entail use of data sets collected from internet sites and/or Bloomberg and S&P Market Insight. Students will then require the use of various financial functions of Excel in spreadsheets. The project includes:
a.Construction of an efficient frontier for a group of individual or portfolios of securities;
b.Estimating the Index Market Model using historical data;
c.Estimating and comparing the betas of several firms in a industry using the Index Market Model; and
d.Estimating the value of the stock using DDM and other calculation techniques.

The concepts and topics of this course are regularly applied in The Wall Street Journal (http://www.wsj.com) and The Financial Times (http://www.ft.com). You are encouraged to read them as often as possible. Also check out the Web sites recommended by the authors at the end of each chapter.

Companies used:
BP, Stock price: BP (NYSE)
Rosneft, Stock price: ROSN (MCX)
ArchCoal, Stock price: ACIIQ (OTCMKTS)

Compare these companies to the market and industry using the Dow jones and s&p. Look at their trend using concepts from the text and discuss how you feel the companies will perform over the next year and why.