FIN 3600 Stock-Trak Project
 Due Date: 10 May 2007
Dr. Mayes

In addition to your trading diary, which describes the reasons that you made each trade, answer the following questions in detail, showing calculations where applicable (answers must be typed):

  1. Describe how and why you chose the securities to invest in at the beginning of the contest.  Did you have any previous investing experience? 
  2. Describe the investment strategy that you used during the semester.  Did your strategy change during the semester?  Why or why not?
  3. If you had it to do all over again, would you change your investment strategy in any way?  If not, why?  If yes, how?
  4. Did you make any option or futures trades during the semester?  If not, why not?  If you did, how did they work out?  Did you do any study outside of class to learn about these contracts before trading them?
  5. Did you use technical analysis, fundamental analysis, or both or neither?  Describe your results from these techniques.
  6. Did you learn anything about short-term trading?  Trading on news?  Trading on tips from others you know?  If so, what conclusions have you drawn?
  7. What was your single best (highest HPR) trade during the semester?  Why do you think it did so well?  What, specifically, was your reason for choosing this investment?
  8. What was your single worst (lowest HPR) trade during the semester?  Why did it do so poorly?  What, specifically, was your reason for choosing this investment?
  9. Create a table showing a week by week comparison of your portfolio returns to those of the S&P 500 index and also to the class average. (A chart of this data would be helpful.) The data that you need for this chart is available from the Stock-Trak results spreadsheet for your class. Direct links to the spreadsheets are: Day Class and Night Class.
  10. Overall, how did the total return of your portfolio compare to the return on the S&P 500?  Did you outperform or underperform the index?
  11. Calculate the annualized total return for your portfolio.  Do you think its realistic to assume that you could actually earn that return over the course of a year?  Why or why not.
  12. What was the standard deviation of the returns on your portfolio and the S&P 500 index?  (You don’t need to do this calculation, it is in the spreadsheet referenced above.) Which was riskier?  If your portfolio earned a higher return than the S&P 500, do you think the higher return fully compensated you for the additional risk (if any)?
  13. How many trades did you make during the semester?  How much did you pay in total commissions?  How much did these commissions reduce your total return? (If you made $5,000, before commissions, and paid $500 in commissions, your return was 10% lower than it could have been.)
  14. Do you feel that you traded too much or too little in your portfolio?  Would you trade the same way with your own real money?
  15. Did you feel that the use of Stock-Trak increased your understanding of investing as compared to a class in which your only exposure would have been in a lecture?  Would you recommend that Stock-Trak be used in future sections of FIN 3600?
  16. How much time did you spend (be truthful, it won’t affect your grade) each week on this project?