COURSEWORK MSc Finance and Banking

COURSEWORK MSc Finance and Banking
________________________________________________________________

This coursework is worth 20 per cent of the final course mark.

It must be deposited in the “Essay Coursework for Marking” box beside Room
4C74 by 12pm (Noon) on Thursday 4 May 2009.

The goal of this assignment is for you to demonstrate the use of econometric tools and analysis in examining a company that is traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Style Guideline
Font:   Times New Roman
Font Size:  12
Margins:  ~1 inch – sides, ~2 inches – top/bottom
Line Spacing: 1.5

All graphs, charts, regression outputs, etc. should be numbered and placed in the appendix. Your answers should refer to the appropriate item.

Please, no plastic covers or binders.

Order of Presentation
Page #
1  Coversheet  (can be found in coursework file on WebCT)
2  Answer Q1
3  Answer Q2
4  Answer Q3
5  Answer Q4
6  Bibliography
7 or higher Appendices – graphs, charts, regression outputs, etc

Your answer must be your own work.

To find out what this means, consult the University rules on plagiarism.
________________________________________________________________

Evaluating Beta

This coursework is about evaluating Beta coefficients for US companies belonging to the S&P 500 index.

To carry out the coursework, you first have to carry out the following steps:
 
1.)  Find your company and its web link listed alongside your registration number on the spreadsheet “Assignment to Companies”, which is in the “Coursework” folder on WebCT.

2.) Click once on the company code. This will connect you to the Yahoo Financial website for your company. 

You will get a screen that looks like:

3.) Select historical prices on the left sidebar and a screen like this will appear:

4.) Select weekly prices for the period 1st Jan 2004 to 31st October 2008 and click on “Get Prices”. At the bottom of this page you will see an option to “Download to Spreadsheet”. Select this and save the spreadsheet to your file store.

5.) On the spreadsheet, you will use only the column headed “Adj. Close”. Add the data from the Standard and Poors 500 Index to your spreadsheet over the same period. The S&P 500 data is contained in the spreadsheet
“S&P500Jan2004toOct2008.xls” which is also on the WebCT Coursework
page.
________________________________________________________________________

With this spreadsheet, you are now in a position to carry out the analysis.
________________________________________________________________________

Definition#p#分页标题#e#
The Beta of security i’s return is determined by: βi = Cov(Ri,Rm)/Var(Rm) where Rm is
the return on the market (often replaced with the value-weighted market return or
return on the S&P500 index).

Estimation
Estimating the beta coefficient with historical data can be done using a linear
regression: Ri = ai + biRm + ei. (3) bi is an estimate of βi. The time period for Beta is 3
years (36 months) when available. (We shall use weekly rather than monthly data)

Your four tasks are:

1) Describe your company and its main financial indicators. Do you believe this company is a good investment? Explain. (No more than one page)

2) Estimate a value for βi over the period November 2005 to October 2008. Explain how you would interpret the value of βi (No more than one page).

3) Test whether there was a significant change in the value of βi after Jan 2008. Interpret your finding (No more than one page)

4) Using the whole period, 1st Jan 2004 to 31st October 2008, test whether there have been significantly lower prices in the last week of each month. Interpret your finding. (No more than one page)

Each question ask has an equal weight in the final mark.