Business Stock Report

Project description
1. Now you need to determine how much stock you are buying with your hypothetical $10,000 investment. You will begin tracking your stock on May 18th. Let’s suppose that you chose Verizon (VZ) and began tracking the stock on May 23rd (The second Friday of this class). Assume that the closing market price on that Friday May 23rd is $50.00 per share. Now you have to divide your hypothetical $10,000 investment by $50.00 per share. This will produce a share amount of 200 shares. You will need to check the closing price of your stock each Friday for a six week period.
At the end of the six week period, you will have six data points for your graph. Each data point will represent the closing stock price for each successive Friday. This will be the information you will use to prepare your graph.
To determine if you have gained or lost money, you need to multiply the amount of shares that you originally purchased (in this example, 200 shares determined in Step 2) by the closing market price on the sixth Friday (July 4, 2014 €“ since the market is closed on July 4th, we can use July 3rd price). This will reveal whether or not you have gained or lost money on your original $10,000 investment.

Report Requirements
Content (Minimum of four (4) pages, double spaced, 12-point type, one-inch margins. Please do not exceed five (5) pages, but do NOT submit less than four (4) pages.) Content should include:
History of the company: try to summarize the company history in a few paragraphs.
Product Lines: What’s unique? What’s their market niche? Who is their customer base?
Marketing strategy: advertising, direct selling, promotion, etc.
E-Business strategy: B2B or B2C.
Competition: Who is it? How does your chosen company compete? What is their competitive edge?
Financial highlights: Revenue growth, earnings, Fortune 500 ranking, etc (Do NOT go into excruciating detail on company’s financials.)
What do 3rd party Industry Experts say about this company? What is the company’s outlook for the future? Should you buy, hold or sell the company’s stock? Include at least three (3) opinions.
How did your $10,000 perform? How many shares of stock were you able to buy? What was your percentage gain or loss?
How do you feel about this company? If you had money, would you invest in this company? If yes, why? If no, why? Justify your answer based on concrete information, such as company performance, earnings ratios, business model, etc. DO NOT tell me that you would buy the stock because you made a profit or because you like the company products.

Bibliography: Minimum of eight (8) quality sources. You may use different dated versions of the same publication or URL. Sources must be no older than two-years old. When using Internet sources, make sure you supply URL addresses including all appropriate extensions. Bibliography entries include author, title of the article, publication name, date of publication and location of publication. They should be listed in alphabetical order. Bibliography represents the sources from which you created your content.
Endnotes (1 page): Minimum of eight (8) endnotes. This is a separate page. In the Content Section place a numeral by the information to be endnoted. On the Endnotes Page carry over that number and identify from which publication referenced in your bibliography you obtained the data. Include the page number(s) of the reference. Endnotes are listed in the order they appear in the text. What to endnote: Information not commonly known such as facts, dates, quotes etc. When in doubt€“ ENDNOTE! Place endnotes after material being documented. Do not insert endnotes in the body of your content, only the endnote number.

Grading Procedure
20%
Content quality
Tell me something I don’t know. Dig down into the material, don’t skim. Did you follow the report requirements?
15%
Grammar
Sentence structure, spelling, verbal tense, etc. Please write the paper in third person (the company, it, they, instead of I, my)
15%
Bibliography
Quality of your research. How hard did you dig? What fresh new material did you find?
15%
Endnotes
How many references, cited in your bibliography, did you use? Did you document all data needing endnotes?
10%
Graph
Do not print it off the web. Make it original.
10%
Stock Performance Analysis
How did your $10,000 perform? Would you buy it?
10%
3rd Party Experts
What do experts think of the company? e.g. Merrill Lynch, Fortune, Business Week etc.
5%
Competition
What other corporations does your company compete against? What are your company’s competitive advantages? Why didn’t you buy the competitive stock?
100%