Choose one pair of the companies and find their statements from Yahoo! FinanceLinks to an external site., Google FinanceLinks to an external site., and MSN MoneyLinks to an external site.: Amazon and Wal$-$Mart or Microsoft and Apple.

Examine the financial statements of the two companies in your pair. Most ratios are computed by the websites. If you need any ratio that is not available, you can do your own computation.

Compare their ratios, and see if you can identify any trends from them.

Decompose some ratios to see if there is something interesting.

Based on their ratios, what can you say about the operational efficiencies$/$strategies of the two companies that you have chosen to examine?