Personal Finance - Stock Market Practice #1

One of the best ways to learn about business is to start learning from existing ones. For this assignment you'll need to imagine you have $500 that you're  going to invest in public companies. You must purchase at least a single whole stock (you can't purchase a fraction of AMZN stock for example) but no index or mutual funds (usually a good investment vehicle) despite the call to diversify in the Personal Finance chapter.  Your goal is to be able to increase your investment by the end of the semester. Use Google finance (Links to an external site.) or some other stock/portfolio tracker that will automatically keep track of your imaginary investments (you DON'T need to actually invest real money but if you already have investments you can use those). You are welcome to make as many transactions to your portfolio between now and the end of the assignment but for each transaction (buying or selling) be sure to deduct a 1% fee to simulate brokerage costs.

The purpose of the assignment is to get you familiar with the public markets, how they work, and what kind of things publicly-traded companies are dealing with on the investor side because many of you will work for one sometime in your life and investing can be a key to build wealth making (or losing) money while you sleep. You'll have a couple of mini-assignments throughout the class to help you analyze your thoughts.

Stock Market Practice #1 -Submit a list of the stocks you purchased, how many you purchased, guess how much you think each stock will be worth in a month, and why you decided to invest.

There are a lot of YouTube videos about investing in the stock market for beginners and there is no one right way. Here is also a simple tracker (Links to an external site.) on Google Sheets you can copy to use but you can use any method you'd like to document your practice. Also a great resource for learning business and investing terms: Investopedia's Dictionary  or other money-related sites for an intro into adulting with money (investing, insurance, credit scores, etc.).

As we move throughout the semester, you may be called upon during class to share the status of your stock. This will be a great opportunity for the faculty member and your classmates to learn more about the company you chose.

In addition, it would be great for you to explore MORE than just the stock price of the company. For example:

(1) What is their mission?

(2) What are their products and what market(s) do they compete in?

(3) Do they have a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program? If so, what are some of their key initiatives. 

(4) Do they have a focus on Diversity and Inclusion? If so, what are some of their key initiatives and/or accomplishments.

(5) Any other key events during the the semester. 

Happy Investing!