USE EXCEL

1.) You have just started working for a financial planning firm and have been asked to analyze the performance and risk of the following 10 stocks to decide on the optimal portfolio for your client:

The stocks (tickers) are:

IBM (IBM)

Caterpillar (CAT)

Autodesk (ADSK)

Apple (AAPL)

Ebay (EBAY)

Goldman Sachs (GS)

J.P. Morgan (JPM)

Boeing (BA)

Walmart (WMT)

Hershey (HSY)

S&P 500 (GSPC)

13 Week Treasury Bill

* Collect information on the dividend-adjusted price of each stock and the S&P 500 index and the risk-free rate from Yahoo (finance.yahoo.com) as follows:

* Enter the stock symbol, and click historical data on the right tab. Enter start data September 1, 2012 and end data September 1, 2017 to get five years of data. Click on show historical prices and frequency monthly.

* Click on apply and download data. Save the date and the adj close column and delete all other columns. Continue repeating step b) until you have downloaded all the tickers and keep pasting the adj close in columns next to each other, labeling each column with the ticker, except the S&P500 index should be labeled as themarket MKT and the 13-week Treasury bill as the risk free rate RF. Label the tab as DATA.

* Convert these dividend-adjusted prices to monthly returns in a separate spreadsheet within your Excel file. Name this tab as RETURNS. Create return series from September 1, 2012 to September 1, 2017 for each stock and the S&P500 index. Convert the annualized T-bill rate which is quoted in percentage points to monthly return by dividing by 1,200 (there are 12 months per year and 100 percentage points per unit return). Format all the returns as percentage with 2 decimal places