n the second week, you selected a manufacturing company ( Caterpillar aka CAT ) and described its products and costs. For this week, refer back to that company and perform trend analysis for the most recent 4 years (the financial statements needed for this assignment may be available at https://finance.yahoo.com/). Analyze the trends for 3 line items you believe are most important in evaluating a company for the balance sheet and for the income statement (3 each). In your initial post, answer the following questions:

• What do you observe in the linear trends (i.e., are values increasing or decreasing)?
• What are the trends on a common-size basis?
• What would be your next steps in completing a thorough analysis of the trends?