As the newly promoted manager for Morningstar, Inc. and with the agency considering dropping stocks and bonds and focusing solely on mutual funds, I would have to think about the prospect of this venture and do some research of the agencies financial status in order to be able to thoroughly analyze this undertaking. By Morningstar, Inc. concentrating more on mutual funds, rather than stocks and bonds would be a positive move for the business because they will be assisting more individual investors who are having a problem making a decision regarding how to invest (Ferrell, et al., 2016). Furthermore, mutual fund investments are the best investment for clients who are too busy to do their own investing in the market (Ferrell, et al., 2016).
What are the major reasons investors purchase mutual funds as reported to the Lawrences by the Financial Advisor?
This memorandum shall provide an in depth analysis of Target Corporation’s performance for the most current for the year 2014. To obtain a better understanding of Target Corporation’s performance the following categories shall be addressed: Preliminary analytical procedures, Accounting policy efficiency and reliability, Evaluation of Disclosure Controls, Evaluating Company’s technology system and its Risks, Substantive Procedures, Payout ratio in the Target Corporation financials, Fraud Considerations and Extended Procedures.
Although only required to discuss two associations this writer thought it was important to discuss the SEC as they are directly connected to FINRA in that they take litigation cases, and fraud cases from FINRA and follows up on whether any security laws or criminal laws were broken. Once they investigate the wrong doing they proceed with the corrective action that best suits the offense not excluding criminal prosecution and jail time. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (2014) website the mission of the SEC is to “protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation”. The SEC was created to ensure that all investors big or small have a fair and unbiased account of a companies transactions and current state of affairs.
Vanguard Case Analysis After reading through the Vanguard case, there were a few difficult forks in the road that Vanguard seems to be facing. The company’s future can be greatly affected by some of these difficult choices. Vanguard has to decide whether to change their investment offerings, further develop Internationally, or to simply advertise to increase their client base. Top managers at Vanguard have to step up to the plate and rollout detailed plans as to what path the company should take regarding some of these issues. Through our in-class discussions, the majority of the students argued on one major problem that Vanguard was facing.
This case discusses the unique value proposition of Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), which used academic research to create specialized portfolios focused on Small Capitalization companies. Their investment philosophy particularly focused on research by Fama and French and Banz. They researched how small cap companies tend to outperform large cap companies over time. In addition, FDA created an additional competitive advantage by created trading efficiencies to reduce transaction cost.
Third Star Financial Services is an “un-banked” business that was built from a foundation of several money transfer operations that can be transact through an agent or an online facility since 1996. Third Star’s goal and objective is to develop and implement an enterprise architecture platform for the organization that is more streamlined and leaned with consistent policies and procedures throughout the company. A consolidated, centralized and standardized single version of the business structure and a modernize technology that can provide ease and flexibilities to their new and existing customers, in addition to their support staff and management teams.
In the negotiation for the Federated Science Fund I represented the Stockman Company. The meeting started with a caucus between Turbo and I which set the tone for the negotiation. In the five-minute caucus, we understood that we get the highest payoff by working together and decided to only form a deal with United if it benefited us. This was the main turning point in the negotiation as we returned to United with only high-ball offers: we opened with $220,000 each for Stockman and Turbo, and went only as low as $200,000 each, with $80,000 for United. United presented counter offers throughout, but all of them were below our $200,000 reservation point. Even though United continuously demanded a more inclusive deal, we saw no real benefit and made a deal by splitting $440,000 evenly.
Ross, S.A., Westerfield, R.W., Jaffe, J. and Jordan, B.D., 2008. Modern Financial Management: International Student Edition. 8th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies.
William Sharpe, Gordon J. Alexander, Jeffrey W Bailey. Investments. Prentice Hall; 6 edition, October 20, 1998
The execution of our investment strategy occurred in three stages. First, we invested in t-bills and bonds according to our original set out investment plan. This was to decrease potential losses and risk associated with the declining equity market. Therefore, we invested about two hundred thousand of our funds into these low risk assets to maintain buying power. Due to inflation, we did not want to lose buying power by leaving funds in an account without earning interest. Further, we invested a small portion of funds into the commodity market. With a slumping equity market and a positive outlook on the gold commodity, we invested in Gold Corporation at the same time we invested in income assets.
What do you understand by the phrase “stakeholder analysis”? Attempt a stakeholder analysis of an organisation that you are closely associated with.
Other mutual fund investors also followed them believing that the market activity indicated that these companies had a good future ahead.
Apple Inc.’s Financial Analysis case study will cover the nine-step assessment process to evaluate the company’s future financial health. The nine-step evaluation process will entail the following: 1) Fundamental analysis covers objectives, plan of action, market, competing technology, and governing and operational traits, 2) Fundamental analysis-revenue direction, 3) Investments to support the firm’s entities action plan, 4) Forthcoming profit and competitive accomplishment, 5) Forthcoming external financial requirements, 6) Accessibility to direct at sources of external finance, 7) Sustainability of the 3-5 year plan, 8) Strain examination beneath scenarios of calamity, and 9) Present financial plan (State University, 2013). The fundamental analysis will be explained primarily in the next section.
Mutual funds are an easy, convenient way to invest, without having to worry about choosing individual stocks. A mutual fund can be defined as a single portfolio of stocks, bonds, and/or cash managed by an investment company on behalf of many investors. The investment company manages the fund, and sells shares in the fund to individual investors. When one invests in a mutual fund, they become a part-owner of a large investment portfolio, along with all the other shareholders of the fund. The fund manager invests the contributions when shares are purchased, along with money from the other shareholders. Every day, the fund manager counts up the value of all the fund's holdings, figures out how many shares have been purchased by shareholders, and then calculates the net asset value(NAV) of the mutual fund, which is the price of a single share of the fund on that day. If the fund manager is doing a good job, the NAV of the fund will usually get bigger and the shares will be worth more.
I am currently majoring in Finance Management. Most of the time people think of finance as just managing money. However, finance is needed for so much more! The finance industry deals with starting businesses, developing new products, expanding markets, as well as everyday things like saving for retirement, purchasing a home, and even insurance. The stock market, asset allocation, portfolio analysis, and electronic commerce are all key aspects in finance. In this paper, I will explain how these features play a vital role in the industry, along with the issues that come with these factors.