According to the efficient market hypothesis, stock prices fully reflect available information about the value of the firm, and there is no way to for individuals or mutual funds to earn excess profits or outperform the market. But is it true? We will play a simple investment simulation to test this hypothesis.

In this weeks discussion, you are asked to recommend at least ONE stock you would like to hold throughout the semester to maximize your return. Based on your recommendations and the class discussions, I will select the top 15 most recommended stocks to form a class portfolio with a hypothetical $1,000,000 in week 4. We will use this portfolio to find out if it is an efficient investment to outperform the market.

For each stocks recommendation, you should act like a stock analyst to provide rationales about why investors should hold this stock. You are NOT required to write up a whole page research report to explain your reasons in detail, but you need to summarize some key aspects of why you pick up this stock. For example, you can talk about a companys unique strategies, business model, new product development, customer satisfaction, etc. that you believe it would drive up the stock price. Some data, including P/E ratio, EPS, ROA, ROE, or statistics from the technical analysis would be helpful for your classmates to understand the stock better.