Week 5: 10/16

Having just concluded the fifth week of term (time flies!), it's time for me to send out progress reports. In order to do this, I really need your homework assignments for last week. As I said in class, you have until the end of the weekend (that's midnight Sunday) to email these to me at rosalyn.newhouse@villagehome.org.

For this coming week, you should have set up your stock-tracking gizmo on Yahoo finance, according to the handout (link below). Next week we will be looking at how we follow stocks in the market.

Week Five Handout

Week 4: 10/8

Something that will help you in almost any field of study is a good understanding of the vocabulary for that field.

There are hundreds of specialized terms used in the subject of investments. In this class we are going to focus primarily on the vocabulary of stocks (as opposed to other types of investments).

Look up the words on this list and make sure you have a basic understanding of them.

Homework assignment for students seeking credit on this course: Write a brief essay, between one-half and one page long, on the subject of the stock market. The essay can be on any focus you like: The process of investment, the way stocks are used to acquire investors, how stocks gain or lose value, etc.

1. Use at least ten of the vocabulary terms in your essay.
2. At the end of the essay, type one of the following statements:
A: I did the best work I could on this assignment.
B: I am satisfied with the work I did on this assignment.
C: I think I could have done better on this assignment.

Here are some online glossaries you can use. You can use other sources as well.

http://www.raymondjames.com/gloss.htm

http://www.investopedia.com/categories/stocks.asp?&viewed=1

http://biz.yahoo.com/f/g/


Stockbroker
Stock Dividend
Cash Dividend
Stock Certificate
Share
Shareholder
Stock Exchange
Stock Index
Portfolio
Common Stock
Stock Split
Equity
Preferred Stock
Trading
Security
Trading Volume
Closing Price
Mutual Fund
Growth Stock
Blue Chip Stock
AMEX Composite
Dow Jones Industrial Average
NASDAQ Composite
Standard & Poor 500
Penny Stock
Bull Market
Bear Market

Week 3: 10/1

I hope you enjoyed finding out something about who owns what in the corporate world this week!

Reminder: This week's homework is very simple. You should find three (or more) companies you think you would be interested in investing with. For each one, find out:
1. Is it a publicly-traded company?
2. Is it self-owned, or owned by some other company?
3. If it's a publicly traded company, what kind of performance history does it have? (This doesn't have to be complex - just a basic idea.)

When you do this, keep track of companies you find that AREN'T available to invest in also. Keep looking up companies until you have three that ARE available for investment.

The other thing I would like you to do this week is, for those of you seeking credit (and those of you who just feel like doing it), please bring in your idea of what you might like to do as a final project. All you need this week is the idea, so I can approve it.

The timeline for the final project is:
End of Fall Term: Present a proposal, outline, or plan on what you will be doing.
End of Winter Term: Present your preliminary report. If your project is a research paper, this would probably be the first draft of the paper. If your project is an activity, this would be a summary of what you've done so far and how you expect to progress.
End of Spring Term: Your completed report on your project.

This final project will represent a good part of your grade. I will be evaluating it based largely on how much attention and focus you put into it. It's only an eight-hour project, so you don't have to start a major corporation or take over Wall Street or anything like that, but you should do the project to the best of your ability.

Next week we will be talking about how someone would go about actually investing in the stock market. See you then!

First Class, 9/17

Hi Gang,

As I promised, here is a reminder for you of this week's homework. But, before I get to that, I would also like to point out that homework is optional - but if you choose to do it, you will get a lot more out of the class, and if you are doing the class for credit, it will make a difference in how I evaluate your participation.

For those of you taking the class for credit, I will bring to class next week an outline of how I will be grading the class so you will know what to expect. For those of you NOT seeking credit, these guidelines may be helpful for you also, just to get more out of the class.

So - for the homework - remember, I asked you to choose a company, and figure out how much money that company would have made you by now if you had invested $100 in it the day you were born.

You can use the tools at http://finance.yahoo.com to help you with this. Go to the Investing tab, plug in your company's code, and click "Get Quotes." Now go to "Historical Prices" on the left, and enter your birth date as the starting date.

Now go to the last page and find the price of the company's stock on the day you were born. Figure out how much stock you would have been able to buy with your $100. (Fractions of shares are okay.)

You'll notice that the table gives you an "adjusted close" figure. You can ignore that for now - we will be talking about what those numbers mean later on in the class. For now, just use the closing price column. (Your final values will be a little off as a result, but don't worry about that.)

You'll have to sort of walk yourself up through the years to find out when there were stock splits. So, for instance, you might have six shares of stock valued at $21 each (total $126) on May 10, 1998, and there is a 3-for-2 stock split. That will mean that instead of your six shares, you'll now have nine shares, each worth $14.

Keep track of how many shares you have and what your stock is worth on each of your birthdays, and each time there is a stock split.

The last figure you'll have is what your stock is worth on 9/17 (the date of our first class). I hope it turns out you are all millionaires!

Also, for those of you who are seeking credit for the class, please bring in a proposal for your independent study. This can be one eight-hour project, or something that takes you 20 minutes a week for the whole year, or you can divide it up however you like. It can be a research report, or an activity, or anything that works for you.

Feel free to email me (rosalyn.newhouse@villagehome.org) with any questions.

See you next week!