Consider that a "risk-free" investment is a U.S. Treasury investment (called "U.S. Treasury securities"). These are investment opportunities offered by the U.S. government in the form of a government bond that anyone can invest in (many companies invest their profits in these type of securities). Access this site and choose a U.S. Treasury investment type and make note of the interest rate (http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/Pages/TextView.aspx?data=yield ). Those interest rates are quoted on an annual-basis; for example, if you invest in the "1-month" U.S. Treasury bill on August 5th, the annual interest rate applied is 0.03% (very low, indeed). If you would like to learn more about U.S. Treasury securities, please take a look at this official site: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/products/products.htm

3) Access Google Finance (just like you did in Discussion Week 2) and choose a corporation that you would like to invest in (https://www.google.com/finance ). Once you have the stock information of your company, make note of the value that is posted for "Div/yield" that is located on the top part of the page. The "yield" value is the average return of that stock. For example, for Walmart's stock, the yield is 2.3%, which is telling us that if you invest in Walmart stock you can expect to get 2.3% as an annual return on your investment (but only if you keep the stock and receive part of the profits of Walmart): https://www.google.com/finance?q=walmart&ei=gUkAUvCEDqK5iwL9mwE