Virtual Stock Exchange Assignment


Investment Unit

    For your grade on the Virtualstockexchange investment challenge, you will be required to keep a daily journal,  and track your buys, sells, and short sells.  Your information, records, and journal should be kept in a notebook, which will be collected for a grade at the conclusion of the unit.

    Requirements for the notebook include:

·         Print-outs of your portfolio, which trace the history of your investments. Print out  the Basic portfolio at the conclusion of each day of trading.

·         Daily journal entries, which include: what you purchased, sold, short sold or covered.  Also, account for the reasons you made each transaction.  Make sure you include news clippings or print-outs of news items which were the basis for your transaction decisions.  Be sure to at least make 1/2 your decisions based on company research, and solid information.

·         Look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard and Poors 500 index, and the Nasdaq Composite Index each day.  Summarize what happened in the broader market, and how your stocks compared each day. 

 ( Virtual Stock Exchange, http://www.latimes.com/business or http://www.cnnfn.com   are just two of many sites with this information.)

·         Keep readings and notes assigned to you.  Write a glossary of terms you learn, and notes from readings which reflect what you learned of the financial market

·         Write an overall assessment of how you did in the market, and what you learned and concluded about the stock market, and finances.


To learn about the companies listed on the stock exchange, use the following web sites for investing information:

http://www.nyse.com       This is the New York Stock exchange.  Go to “Listed Companies,” then go to “Listed Company Links,” which is located below the same column when you click on Listed Companies. When you click on a company, you will get the company homepage, and information on products, etc.

Stock Quotes and chart  at  http://finance.lycos.com/

This site will allow you to look up the symbol of a company traded on the stock market, or just type in the symbol of the company (if you know it.)  You can click on Charts, News, Broker Research, and others to learn about the companies.

 

On our site ( http://www.virtualstockexchange.com  ) you can learn about the companies for which you are interested in purchasing stock.  Go to the Stock Symbol field , type in your company symbol (or look it up,) and click on Quote.  You will get the current prices of the stocks, then you can click on charts, news, profiles, below the listings for detailed information.


 

Buying/Selling on Virtual Stock Exchange

http://www.virtualstockexchange.com     This is the site of our investment page. Go to  LogIn to your account. 

  To purchase or sell stock after you log in, on the left of your page, under the listings of the watch stocks, enter the Symbol and QTY (Quantity of shares) you wish to Buy.  Select Trade, then review your purchase/sell, by clicking Preview Order. Finally, click on Place Order.  Note that you will be “charged” $29.95 for each buy and sell.

 

You can check your portfolio by clicking Portfolio Holdings.

 


Suggestions for initial buys

    The methods will vary widely for selecting your stocks.  For your first purchases, you can think of products you enjoy, react to news of new inventions, or research the stocks and companies as much as you wish.  Remember that you have $500,000 to invest, and that each buy/sell costs $29.95 .


  Stock Market Investigation

Directions: Today you will be investigating information on the stock market, and finding corporations in which to invest your $500,000 .  Be concise in your answers to the questions, and be sure to keep detailed information on the corporations in which you decide to invest.

1.  Type in the following url to answer the questions:

http://www.nyse.com

Define the following:

a. Dow Jones

 b. New York Stock Exchange Composite

c.  Standard and Poors 500

d.  Preferred Stock

e.  Common Stock

f.  Price to earning ratio

 

2.  Using the url  http://www.nyse.com/ , look up:

   a.  A brief history on the market, and write down five important facts you learned.

b.   Go to the company’s area and find five companies (or more) in which you would want to invest.  Find out what the company symbols are, the products of the company and three other interesting facts.

Company         stock symbol     products       three facts

 

1.

 

2.

 

3.

 

4.

 

5.

 

 

 

3.   Then go to

http://www.virtualstockexchange.com and input the five companies to find out the following:

 What is the current price of each of the stocks,

 What was the low and high for the past 52 weeks

 What was the high and low for the past 90 days

Company

current price per share

low/high (52 week low/high)


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