SMG Assignment #5

            For the better part of my time in Econ, we played the stock market game. It’s essentially a free game that allows members to practice trading in a lifelike brokerage simulation.  By participating in the community, you can learn the ins and outs of Wall Street by investing virtual money.  This virtual stock market game features real-time trading simulation and multiple contests. Beginning investors can practice stock market trading, compete with friends and investors, In doing all of this, especially with a school like LMG where the kids could really competitive, this was about the only part of school I can remember having fun and learning at the same time. A couple of points that you learn fairly fast were:

 1) If you are going to try to win the contest then you need to swing for the fences and hope for the best since you have nothing to lose (since it is not real money). This is not a way to learn how to invest your portfolio.

 2) If you are doing short-term trading strategies then these kind of sites can be useful to see if your strategies work. Unfortunately for long term buy-and-hold investors - these sites are really only good for learning about actual orders (for example: buying with a limit).

3) History repeats itself on Wall Street

One of my groups biggest things we got to take away from this is we learned, after our failing first week, not to invest in mediocre companies just because we like the product personally.  It is by no means impossible to make a fair one-time profit from companies with a stationary or even a declining sales curve. Operating economies resulting from better control of costs can at times create enough improvement in net income to produce an increase in the market price of a company's shares. This sort of one-time profit is eagerly sought by many speculators and bargain hunters. It does not offer the degree of opportunity, however, that should interest those desiring to make the greatest possible gains from their investment funds.

            In conclusion this game could be fun or played serious. When you consult with your group to make these decisions with your money it makes you feel like a grownup addressing his peers as weird as it sounds. This assignment was one of the more empowering ones that gave us the choice making abilities. Some groups chose to listen to Mr Ryan and invest smartly and almost doubled their money for it. While other groups invested without any thinking and lost almost all of their money. Either way we learned a lot about the big scary world out there called wall street and this defiantly better prepared us for it.

Stock Assignment #5

Kayla Ashe May 9, 2015

Economics Assignment #5 (Stock Market Game) B-band

For economic my group members, Takia, Libby and Raliek and I were assigned to play a game called The Stock Market Game. The Stock Market Game is a game that is mostly been played for students and the purpose of it is to to become an investor. You can kind of say it was life we stockbrokers like in Wolf of Wall Street, (well kinda of) and our main goal was to make a lot money off of the stocks we purchased.  This experience of playing the game taught me a few things that I did not know before actually playing this.

Let me first say that I plan on not doing anything related to finance in my future. To be honest, my first reaction to this assignment was that do we really have to do? I’m not going to learn anything from this boring assignment so why do we all have to do it?  Well then so of course I could not do anything about it so Takia, Libby, Raliek and I teamed up together and were discussing what our industry.  Basically we had a budget of $100,000 to spent for buying stocks. I would say it was one of the hardest parts of this assignment especially since we had all different opinions of what we wanted to invest in. We came up with multiple ideas such as focusing on food companies, clothing stores, phone companies, etc. We narrowed it down to buying T-mobile (phone company), Sony (home appliances) and Vodafone (phone company) we wanted to mainly focus on technology in the beginning. We thought technology was a good start because now a days people tend to want to have the latest things such as a new cell phone, new computer or even a bigger television, etc. When we were buying the stocks, we decided to try to spent our money wisely and only buy a few stocks as our plan to decide where to go with how we were deciding to gain more money. Days later, we saw the progress that we which in fact we were gaining money and all of our stocks were increasing. So we decided that even though we were doing good with our stocks, we knew that we should jump too far into it and buy numerous amount of stocks so we looked up stocks were popular but were also cheap to buy. So we purchased 3 more stocks, which were Guess, Urban Outfitters and American Eagle Outfitters. We decided that we should keep continuing with being in the technology industry, so we wanted go towards the clothing industry. However we wanted to do research before doing anything that can cause us regret our decision and we lose money as our result. Days later, we saw that we lost money due to the fact that Vodafone was decreasing in stocks so we decided to sell that as an opportunity cost for us to try to gain back the money we lost.  So we frequently checked on our progress and saw that we were doing better and was gaining back the lost we had slowly. So we decided to buy more stocks such as Netflix and Apple, we knew that it was risky but we we thought that we can try to gain extra money.

Overall we were proud of how we were doing with our stocks and we thought that this experience was helpful especially since I learned how to be wise with my money even though I would not be pursuing it as a career, I know it would help me with spending my money to things that can benefit me in the long run. So now I see the benefits of playing this and it changed my opinion. I would also recommend this game to other people who are around my age range so they can know that money is something to be very serious about and to have a good strategy when dealing with it.  

The group began with a budget of 100,000 and we decided not to touch the money for a week so we can really plan out how we were going to use the money wisely. As a result, our total equity increased trivially due to interest . When we began to invest in stocks, we only investing 10 shares into companies that cost fifty dollars and below using this method we stayed steady in the market. Then, we decided to invest more money into a popular and expensive stock which caused our total equity to decrease because we invested a huge portion of our money into the company and the stock kept decreasing.

-Takia G., Kayla A., Libby S. & Raliek G.  

Stock Assignment#3

Kayla Ashe, Takia Graves, Raliek Gholson & Libby Sanchez
B-Band

Since we have been playing the stock market game for some time now, it has been a very competitive game that we have played. The best part is when our stocks have increased and won money but then again everyone gets happy when we win some sort of profit. However it's when we saw that we have lost money and of course it is disappointing but it plays a key role towards us. Whenever there is a decrease in money it provides us with an understanding that we need to come up various possibilities that we can try to make our stocks increase. Our strategy was to try to but the popular but also the cheapest stocks so we can be cautious with our money. We would check everyday of the stocks and our progress in the game. If we were doing good then we would continue to buy more stocks. However, when there is decrease in the stock and our progress then we would see the stock that has decreased more than the others or the only one. We believe that our strategy is helpful to us and we would not be able to change it but if we need to then we will.

Stock Assignmet #2

Libby S, Kayla A, Takia G. & Raliek G.
Economics homework  b-band
April 23, 2015

              Our group has purchased 5 stocks so far this week. We have bought 3 apparel stocks. The stock price for Urban Outfitters over three years has been between 41.70 - 42.65. Recently there has been an increase in stock purchase between  November 2014 and March 2015. We believe that the trend in clothing bought and wore by this generation of teenagers have contributed to the rise for URBN. We predict to see the price staying steady at 42 due to summer apparel that sure to bring in income to the company as well as more investors.
               The second apparel stock we purchased was Guess?, which is currently priced at 18.45. Stock price in this case has decreased within the past three years but has recently seen a significant recovery in March 2015. We see a higher demand of Guess brand clothing during spring/summer seasons when shown a 3 month graph of the Guess stock. We see price increasing due to this trend.
             Our third apparel stock purchased was American Eagle Outfitters priced at 17.10. The price has increased over the past 2 years by $6. We predict that AEO will keep increasing this year and help us gain equity even if it is our lowest priced stock.
            Our other 2 stocks are the highest priced stocks we have chosen; Sony at 30.72 and T-Mobile at 34.44. Both of these companies are worth millions of dollars and millions of customers. This is why we believe that the value of stock will increase in the upcoming years. However, we are aware that the competition between Sony and Apple products can result in a decease in stock price, this is also true between -Mobile and other companies such as Verizon and AT&T. Overall, prices in stocks we have chosen have shown to be increasing, contributing to our net equity gain.

Stock assignment #1

Kayla A, Takia G. & Libby S.
Economic homework b-band
April 19, 2015

      We choose to invest in T-Mobile stock because this company introduces very innovative ways to appease the consumer which causes the costumers to return and causes the stock value to increase. This is reliable network, and the quality that helps people stick together with the people all over.  T-Mobile stores carry many products that no other company. This company also has a low stock price which allows investors to buy more. This company is worth 29.56 billion and had capable of reaching over 293 million Americans.
​      Sony is a multinational corporation that originated from Japan in 1946. Every since they created various products such as Televisions, Digital Cameras, Smartphones, Tablets, Video Cameras, Headphones, Portable Audio, Playstations, etc. that manifolds of people tend to buy and/or want. In other words, Sony has constantly have been successful for many years in which “annual sales approximately $75 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2014 and employs approximately 140,900.” In a recent article, it describes how Sony is improving its products especially “PS4 and PS3.PlayStation Vue allows the users to watch TV on demand. The service is based on cloud DVR, which allows the users to stream cartoons, movies, sports and TV series on Sony consoles.” Overall, we decided that buying a stock from Sony can benefit us.
       Vodafone is a British multinational corporation that originated in 1991. It is mainly consists of branded phones and branded devices. Recently the corporation has &ldquo;more than 400 million customers around the world choose us to look after their communications needs… operate in around 30 countries and partner with networks in over 50 more…&rdquo; In a recent article, Vodafone has decided to donate their products to more rural schools. With the help of vodafone, &ldquo;it will be good for them for the school students in doing research work and other learning activities&rdquo;. Overall, we decided that buying a stock from Vodafone can benefit us. </span>    Vodafone is a British multinational corporation that originated in 1991. It is mainly consists of branded phones and branded devices. Recently the corporation has “more than 400 million customers around the world choose us to look after their communications needs… operate in around 30 countries and partner with networks in over 50 more…” In a recent article, Vodafone has decided to donate their products to more rural schools. With the help of vodafone, “it will be good for them for the school students in doing research work and other learning activities”. Overall, we decided that buying a stock from Vodafone can benefit us.

Nothing perfect in society

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."( John Lennon) In this society there are many opinions on what can make a perfect society but are any of these political philosophy superior to the other? The answer is no,there is no superior political philosophy because each philosophy are connected to one another. Each theory is based on what would make a perfect society but that is a flaw because in all actuality no society would ever be perfect.Utilitarianism the doctrine that an action is right, it promotes happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct. This philosophy is flawed because everyone in a society can be happy some people have to struggle and be poor some have to be rich and be happy. Ethos/enlightenment is the action of enlightening or the state of being enlightened which is insight, understanding, awareness, wisdom, education, learning, and  knowledge. This is all good in theory but not everyone can absorb knowledge.  Realpolitik principles based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations. Anarchism is a philosophy that gives total power to the government, which isn't good if the government it could lead to corruption. Libertarianism is the theory that emphasizes individualism, which isn't good because if everyone do there own thing then society could become chaotic and bankrupt.European socialism tries to provide work opportunities, education, healthcare, and shelter, as well as trying to avoid violence in disagreements which is impossible because there a lot of people in the world with different opinions.Machiavellian is a philosophy that represents a dictatorship, which isn't good because people don't have a opinion. Egalitarianism is a philosophy that represents equality and for everyone to be treated equal but everyone isn't going to be treated equal. Anarchism is a philosophy that resembles total power which can lead to a corrupt government. In everyone's perfect society there is a flaw. 

-Takia Graves