17. Which one of the following best matches the primary goal of financial management? A. Increasing the dollar amount of each sale B. Increasing traffic flow within the firm's stores C. Transforming fixed costs into variable costs D. Increasing the firm's liquidity E. Increasing the market value of firm 18. Please read a news report from Wall Street Journal as below and pick the correct analysis about the stock market. Dow jumps 900 points after vaccine disclosure drives Moderna shares higher Updated May 18, 2020 5:01 pm EThttps://www.bloomberg.com/news: The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged more than 900 points Monday, its best day since April 6, on hopeful developments surrounding a potential coronavirus vaccine. US stocks surged on Monday as Moderna, a biotech, announced that its coronavirus vaccine candidate had shown encouraging progress. In a small number of healthy volunteers, Moderna's vaccine helped create immune responses that may help protect people from being infected with the novel coronavirus. The biotech is planning to start additional trials immediately and aiming to be ready this fall for potential emergency use of its vaccine. Investors have been closely watching for updates that can provide guidance about economic-reopening efforts, and they were encouraged by Moderna's results. Monday's gains erased losses from last week, when the major indexes slumped following data that showed the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Here's where US indexes stood at 1:40 p.m. ET on Monday: S&P 500: 2,957.84, up 3.3% Dow Jones industrial average: 24,573.76, up 3.75% (888 points) Nasdaq composite: 9,249.28, up 2.6% Moderna Stock Plunged Today (May 20, 2020, 4:04 AM GMT+8 ) Shares of Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) fell 10% on Tuesday after the biotechnology company said it would seek to raise more than $1.3 billion in cash via a public share offering. Moderna intends to use the proceeds from the stock sale to fund the manufacturing of mRNA-1273 for distribution in the U.S. and international markets, pending regulatory approval. The company also said that any funds not needed for the production of mRNA-1273 will be used for the research and development of other drugs in its pipeline, as well as technology investments and general corporate purposes. According to the market information above, we can infer that___________ A. USA stock market are in semi-weak form of market efficiency. B. USA stock market are in weak form of market efficiency. C. USA stock market are in semi-strong form of market efficiency. D. USA stock market are in strong form of market efficiency. E. None of above. The stock market does not have information efficiency and the investors are totally irrational 19. On May 11, 2020, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (FRBSF) issued an research report titled as "Coronavirus and the Risk of Deflation". In this report, FRBSF analyzes as below. The pandemic caused by COVID-19 represents an unprecedented negative shock to the global economy that is likely to severely depress economic activity in the near term. The coronavirus shock may reduce aggregate demand enough to lower the U.S. inflation rate by as much as 2 percentage points. We focus on the risk of a significant drop in inflation from its current level. To assess this risk, we use yield curve models of nominal and real government bond yields from four major countries: Canada, France, Japan, and the United States and general corporate purposes. According to the economy outlook of FRBSF as above, the term structure of interest rates will most likely be: A. upward sloping. B. flat. C. humped. D. downward sloping. E. double-humped. 20. A business survey in April 2020 reports that two out of five small businesses in the USA expect to run out of cash within six weeks. And one in five small businesses say they will run out of cash within three weeks. Frank is the owner of a local fruit store in New York. The sales of his store also suffers recently due to the pandemic. He wants to know how long the store can pay its bills given the amount of cash the store currently has. Which one of the following ratios should he compute? A. Cash ratio B. Current ratio C. Debt ratio D. Cash coverage ratio E. Quick ratio