As part of the grade evaluation, students will prepare a written research paper focused on a particular company of choice. Students will choose a Fortune 500 company (see http://fortune.com/fortune500/ for a complete list of companies) on which they will address the following topics:

Provide a brief overview of the company (week 1 milestone)

Describe the strategy of the business (week 1 milestone)

Perform a SWOT analysis (week 7 milestone)

Discuss the financial performance of the company over the last 3 years (week 7 milestone)

Observe the companys stock price performance over the last 3 years and offer your thoughts on why it has trended up or down in this time (week 7 milestone) Evaluate the use of debt as a means of financing for this company

Critique the companys dividend and share repurchase policy to the extent it has either Students should make use of some of the following resources in preparing their written papers:

Company website

Company Annual Report (Form 10-K)

Yahoo! Finance

Wall Street Journal

NY Times business section

The above list of resources is not exhaustive and students should consider using other resources in order to effectively address the required topics for this assignment. The instructor will be available as a resource to help think of other resources that might be helpful for research.

Students will be required to submit a written paper of approximately 7-8 pages via drop box provided in week 13. The written paper must confirm to APA standards for structure and format and be submitted by no later than 11:59pm on Saturday of week 13. I want it to be aout Walmart.