Provide an overview of your chosen company and why it was in the news in the last 6–10 months.
Overview
Business analytics techniques are used to facilitate decision making by transforming large amounts of raw data into meaningful information and interpretations. Many businesses rely on analysis of relevant historical data to make key strategic and operational decisions with the goal of gaining or maintaining competitive advantage.
Understanding how to use techniques such as graphical representation and descriptive statistics to translate raw data into useful information and visuals is a valuable skill set in the business environment. In this assignment, you will have the opportunity to sharpen your analytics skills by locating and interpreting real-life stock data, and creating a substantial and informative business report.
Scenario/Your Role
You are a member of a business analyst group interested in evaluating and analyzing a publicly traded company that your organization may be interested in acquiring or partnering with in the future. Your supervisor has asked you to create a business report, including graphical representations, from your research efforts and raw stock data.
From that raw stock data, you will create a business report for a company-wide meeting. Your work will help company leadership make decisions about this stock in the future.
Instructions
Choose a publicly traded company for your organization to invest in. Begin by doing some research on companies that interest you and have been in the news recently for something positive. Choose a company that meets the following criteria:
- It has been in the news within the last 6–10 months for something positive (that is, an innovation, a new product, customer service, stock values, et cetera).
- It has publicly traded for at least the past 10 years.
- It plays in only one business platform. Do not pick Apple, Amazon, Disney, Tesla, or other companies that work in multiple industries; that will make your competitor analysis too challenging. Choose a company that does all of its business in a single industry.
Once you have chosen a company to invest in, develop a detailed, well-supported report (at least four pages), outlined as follows:
- Define business context. Provide an overview of your chosen company and why it was in the news in the last 6–10 months. Present an overview of the stock history data on the business or company. Remember business context includes many aspects of the company, including history, mission, values, products and platforms, geographic reach, industry information and data, competitors, et cetera.
- Use at least four reputable sources, cited in proper APA format.
- Create a table that includes information on your company and at least two competitors. The variables you will include in your table are market share, total sales (in the last two years), number of employees, and assets. You can find the information via the Capella library. For example, Hoover’s Company Profiles and Industry Publications. See the Capella library’s MBA Program Guide – Data page for help building a search.
- Collect stock data. You can find the data at Nasdaq, Macrotrends, or another website (for example). You can search for “free historical stock data access” for additional sources of the company stock data. You will use the data to create graphs and tables, and to interpret the graphs and tables. Follow these parameters to define your stock history download from Nasdaq, Macrotrends, or another website (available in the Week 4: Data Description Techniques: Exploring Data reading list):
- Select Time Period for the last two years.
- Select “Historical Prices.”
- Select Frequency as “Daily.”
- Create descriptive graphics and interpret them.
- Download the data.
- Go to Nasdaq.com or another website that provides access to daily stock prices.
- Search for and find the stock information of the company you have chosen. Remember: Do not use a company that plays in multiple industries.
- Once you pull up the general data on the company, review the screen links throughout until you find a link for historical data. Click on the link to access historical data and download the data.
- Follow the instructions provided on your selected website to apply the settings noted in Step 2. Collect stock data and download the data.
- Go to your Downloads folder to open the Excel file you just downloaded. Check to be sure that you have enough lines to show two years of data. If not, reset the settings on your selected website and download the data again.
- Once you are sure that you have two years’ worth of data, save the Excel file.
- Create or calculate descriptive statistics tables using the Data Analysis function in Excel. This includes mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and other typical measures. Create at least the following four graphics:
- Create a scatterplot of the highest stock price (in the column labeled “High”) against time. Write several sentences noting the trends and patterns in the data. Provide an interpretation of what you are seeing. For assistance in creating a scatter plot, search online for a video on how to create a scatter plot in Excel.
- Create a scatterplot of the lowest stock price (usually in the column labeled “Low”) against time. Write several sentences noting the trends and patterns in the data. Provide an interpretation of what you are seeing.
- Create a histogram of the adjusted daily closing stock price (usually in the column labeled “Adj Close”). Make sure the histogram is meaningful by adjusting the bin size so you can see the shape of the histogram. Write several sentences noting the trends and patterns in the data. Provide an interpretation of what you are seeing. For assistance with bin function, search online for a video on how to use the bin function in Excel to create histograms.
- Create a histogram of the stock trading volume (in the column labeled “Volume”). Make sure the histogram is meaningful by adjusting the bin size so you can see the shape of the histogram. Write several sentences noting the trends and patterns in the data. Provide an interpretation of what you are seeing.
- For each of the four graphs:
- Make sure the x and y axis have appropriate labels. For example, “Stock Price in USD” or “Date D/M/Y.”
- Update the title of the graphic to include company name, time frame, and the data findings displayed in the graph.
- Add options—color, trendlines, legend, or others.
- Also, create the following:
- Use the Descriptive Stats function in Excel to produce a table that calculates and provides the mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and other descriptive statistics of daily closing stock price. Then provide an overview and interpretation of what each of the following indicates—the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation.
- Use the Descriptive Stats function in Excel to produce a table that calculates and provides the mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and other descriptive statistics of daily volume. Then provide an overview and interpretation of what each of the following indicates—the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation.
- Interpret the data. Interpret each of your graphs or tables. Note trends, patterns, volatility, and significant events impacting data. Additionally, note limitations of the data set and what additional data sets are needed to analyze the company well.
- Conclusion. Write a conclusion that summarizes your findings and why you recommend the company buy into this stock, referencing your specific data and tables. Present fact-based information only; no opinion please. See the course text for information on how to interpret data. Remain unbiased in your summary. Provide information on limitations of the data set and what additional information and resources are needed for a more robust business report. You may use (and cite) additional resources to help you interpret the data. For example, what does standard deviation say about stock volatility? Or what does the Wall Street Journal say about buying this stock?
