THE INVESTMENT PROJECT Working individually, you will (fictitiously) manage a portfolio initially worth US$ 500,000 over a 10-week period. You will pick securities, and then track the value of your portfolio and possibly rebalance your portfolio over the course of the semester. You should track the value of your portfolio at least twice a week. You should also keep track of the main financial news/events that affect the value of your portfolio over the investment period (using the internet and/or any newspaper/magazine of your choice, e.g. the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times). You will trade and manage your portfolio on StockTrak. Rules You will need to formulate your investment strategy carefully. To inspire you, I suggest that you take a look at some mutual fund descriptions available on the web, for example, this Schwab Core Equity Fund: The recommended book "Stocks for the Long Run" and "Investment Fundamentals Guide" by Vanguard may also be helpful. The internet has a tremendous source of useful information: e.g., finance.yahoo.com, money.cnn.com, bloomberg.com, cnbc.com. The composition of your portfolio should reflect your investment strategy, as well as your outlook on the current state of the economy and individual securities. You can rebalance your portfolio following news and/or market fluctuations, but you are not required to do so over the course of the semester. In any case, you will need to justify your trades (or the fact that you chose not to trade after the formation of the portfolio). Your portfolio will consist of regularly traded US or international securities. I recommend that it contain between 15 and 20 different securities at a time. You may buy on margin and sell short (you will learn what this means within the first few weeks of class), but it is by no means necessary to do so. I understand that the task of forming a portfolio may seem daunting at first, but there are a lot of free, helpful resources on the Internet: 

• finance.yahoo.com (and surely many other places) have "stock screeners" that allow you to select stocks based on your criteria. 

• mutual funds descriptions with a lot of detail, including funds' main holdings, are readily available on the internet (for example on www.vanguard.com and www.schwab.com). 

• numerous places offer "top picks" lists. 

• Your trading platform stocktrak.com also offers some research tools. Feel free to use all of these tools and information. Evaluation You will not be evaluated on the basis of your investment performance. The point of this exercise is not to demonstrate your ability to beat the market (or make a fortune) over a few weeks. Rather, it is to: (i) acquaint you with the properties of security prices and how these react to news; (ii) have you formulate a cogent investment strategy and pick securities accordingly