BUS 495 Stock Analyst Report #1 1. You are recommending the exchange-­‐traded fund SPY to your client. Write an analyst report on SPY and post it on your blog. The link to your report should be sent to me by email before the class on 1/21 (Wednesday). 2. The report should have covered the following points: a. Start your post with a brief introduction of the fund and how your client can acquire shares of the fund. b. Use Yahoo! Finance to download SPY’s historical prices. Construct SPY’s monthly return series. Find its mean and standard deviation. Report these in your blog post. c. Assuming SPY’s monthly return follows a normal distribution, calculate the 95% range of SPY’s expected monthly return. Report the range. d. Use the three numbers (lower bound of 95% range, mean, and upper bound of the range) to do a scenario analysis. Assuming your client invests $500 every month in SPY in an IRA, find the ending balances of his IRA after 30 years of savings. e. Make your recommendation with calculations above and other economic reasons. 3. I like concise writings. As long as you cover all the points, short is better than long.