Brief Guidelines of Project

I am required to write a short financial analysis paper for a publicly-traded US company. Each paper must contain the following ingredients.

1. Obtain the Data

a. Pick a publicly-traded US company ( a lot of firms are publicly traded, for example, McDonald, Apple, Microsoft, pick one you like)

b. Download the firm's financial data from capital IQ (For capital IQ, you need first set up your capital IQ account (refer to the file capital IQ self-registration) and then download the data (refer to the file Manual Download data from Capital IQ))

2. Financial Analysis - Excel Worksheet

a. Using the balance sheet and income statement for analysis

b. Calculate 8 ratios for the most recent 5 years (these 8 ratios are - current ratio; inventory turnover; receivables turnover; total asset turnover; profit margin; equity multiplier; return on asset; return on equity), and think about the trends

c. you need to include in your excel files three worksheets - one for balance sheet, one for income statement and one for ratio calculations)