Stock Market Stock Analysis

Google Inc. (GOOG) was purchased on September 8th, 2011 and sold on December 6th , 2011 with quantity of 5 shares. The purchase price was $534.96 and the closing price was $625.25, which gave me a total return of $431.45 after deducting commissions.

The stock market has always intrigued me and I have since been eager to learn more about it. Starting back in January of this year, I ordered three textbooks on stock trading to become more informed on the subject. After reading these books, I gained further insight on stock trading which led me to open my own brokerage account where I could buy and sell stocks. I started by playing a stock simulation which was very similar in concept to StockTrak, a program we used in this class. I found that this helped provide me with a hands on experience which helped familiarize me with stock trading and learning how to manage and use my money efficiently. I continued to play this simulation for about two months and during this time my portfolio grew about 4%, which provided me a confidence boost and motivated me to invest in my real money into the stock market. In March of 2015, I officially began trading in the stock market and I continued to learn along the way. As of now, I have roughly nine months of stock trading experience. As stated previously, I have always had in interest in the stock market, but I never acted upon it until as recently as earlier this year. My interest in the stock market was peaked because I enjoy taking risks and the stock market

In the beginning of the stock market game I bought only stocks in only 5 different companies, those companies were all companies that I was familiar with. The five companies were Apple, American Eagle, Costco, Disney and Hershey. I bought Apple stock because who doesn’t think of Apple when they think of big companies with a lot of money.

Starbucks shares have gone up and down during the past 3 weeks. “The results, announced after markets closed, sent Starbucks shares down 3.5% in after-hours trading.”(Weise,E) I bought 100 stocks from Starbucks; it first started off at 55.37 and increased to 56.31. I expected for Starbucks performance to be the best, but its stocks are unreliable. Their percentage week change fluctuates. When I initially started doing research on Starbucks the week percentage was at -1.02% and has reach to 2.41%, but later went down to .66%. Their stocks have been unsteady and their weakness is that the prices of their coffee is expensive. “By contrast, a year of drinking at Starbucks, based on two $2 cups a day, will run more than $1,400--not including any snacks

Look at Warren Buffet, who is famous for investing only in companies and businesses that he understands. Certainly in the post-Madoff world, this is an important tenet. Not understanding how an investment proposes to give you a return is a big mistake. So the second key is: understanding.

When investing in a company, the goal is to buy shares at a low price and then sell them at a higher price. Individual stocks may go up or down independent of how “The Market” is doing overall. Stock market indices such as the Dow Jones Average, the NASDAQ, and the Standard and Poors 500 report how “The Market” is doing “on average.” To check

Playing the stock market game taught me how to invest through trading with stocks among companies. I believe that it would give me insight in the future when I’m dealing with real-life investments giving me the knowledge of buying, selling, shorting, and covering. Using actual money rather than theoretical money seems quite scary when it’s lost whenever it’s unpredictable where the money will end up. In my opinion, I think that the main purpose of the game is to demonstrate the reality of stocks and how they function. Even though the game was fake, it gave me real worries about the chances that I could have made either losing it or winning it. Although I did not win, it did give the experiences that I need for my daily life. I should instead go with my instincts

Monday, September 10, 2012, I started Stock-Trak, an online portfolio game. Stock- Trak allowed me to gain hands on experience testing different investment strategies in a risk-free, yet realistic environment. From September 10 to November 16, 2012, I took part in one such simulation by managing an online Stock-Trak portfolio. I was given an initial amount of $100,000 pretend cash with which to invest. All monetary decisions were at my discretion. This paper discusses my trading experience , my portfolio’s performance, the strategies used during the simulation, what I learned in the process, and how I will implement the knowledge gained from the simulation in future investments.

Being a stockholder can have great rewards like a viable source of income, or an eggs nest for retirement, however it does have its downsides as well. Owning stock in a corporation bears the risk of losing all one’s investment if the company goes bankrupt. Aside from financial benefits, owning stock allows stockholders to have a voice (however small it may be) in the company’s direction.

For the month of December, I was given an assignment consisting of $100,000 and four stocks to invest in. My four stocks were The Ralph Lauren Corp., Visa Inc., Master card Inc. and The Chevron Corp. As stated I was given a month to record my data and I ended up with a total capital gain of $5,518.36 for the one month period for my investments. I have to thank you Mr. Acker, this project was not difficult, but it did confuse me. Receiving this assignment scared me in a way, because I didn’t know what I was getting into. The finance world is scary and tricky, one minute the market is doing good and other days it would be low. While calculating my capital gains or losses I thought I would lose a larger

The stock that I have analyzed is Apple (AAPPL), which it falls under the technology sector and trades under the NASDAQ. This sector holds the biggest companies around the world. A lot of these companies are well known such as: Amazon, Google, LinkedIn, and etc. The technology sector is an undeniably investment opportunity for every investor around the world. Lets face it technology keeps improving and we have only seen the beginning of it. These companies, such as Apple, are associated with constant innovation and invention. Our modern economy relies upon the technology sector to improve quality, productivity, and profitability.

I believe that people should invest safely into the market by buying either mutual funds or going to someone that will make sure they can manage a positive grossing portfolio. My problem with the stock market is I like to gamble and this is gambling, I enjoy buying more quantity of stocks instead of diversifying more of my portfolio. During this entire project I picked out incredible stocks. If I just waited to sell the stocks I would have made over 20,000 dollars. However, no one can guess where the market would turn out. The thursday before the assignment was due I was in second place and that afternoon the tech stocks just crash and keep going into

Over the past semester in Economics I have invested in and monitored the stock market. I learned how investing in certain companies can be risky and proper research about the companies are detrimental before buying stocks. Three stocks that have influenced most of my financial earnings and losses include Twitter, Amazon, and Pepsi.

Our task for this project was to play a virtual stock market game on www.marketwatch.com. We had to read market related news and then buy and sell stocks of NASDAQ based on that news. I started playing from the 9th February till the game ended on 21st April. At the end of the game, my ranking was 11th out of 24 players and I had made a profit of $5401.48 at the end. I had actively taken part in this game, playing most days of the week when possible. I have learnt that stock prices do follow a random walk like we learnt from this course and that any new information that affects the stock prices has immediate

Gittman (2004, pp. 312) divided stock into two types, such as common stock and preferred stock. He also showed that dividends are the outcome of investment. So, common stocks are an ownership claim against primarily real or productive asset (Higgins, 1995), but he also said that if the company prospers, stockholders are the chief beneficiaries, if it falters, they are the chief losers. Smith (1988) presented that stocks are one of the most popular forms of investment. People buy stocks for various reasons: some are interested in the long-term growth of their investment by buying low priced stock of a new company in the hope of substantially growth of share price over the next few years. Another reason he suggested that in a well established firm stockholders expect the stock growth will be stable over the long run. (Smith,1988).