Stock Market Project Essay

Stock Market Project
Considering that my group and I came in second place, I would assume that we were pretty successful and used our money well. Our total gain was 3.67% and total equity was $103,667.63.   However, there were many dips and repressions in our stock’s performances. For instance, we bought shares of Target thinking that after Black Friday, we would become “millionaires”. Much was it to our surprise when Target took a quick decline and cost us a big percentage of our money.   Another stock that surprised my group, but not I, was our exchange-traded fund, Vanguard Intermediate Term Bond. We never lost and excessive amount of money because of this ETF and we ended up making a lot of money because of its performance during our experiment.
For the first few weeks of our project, my group was ranked number one because we had the highest percent gain. However, on or around December 4th, we checked our portfolio and were quite upset. Although we did pick many great stocks to invest in, the performance of those stocks was not what we expected it to be. You see, in the beginning of our game, we chose to invest in a lot of commercial stores like Target, Wal-Mart, and The Gap; in hopes of riding the Black Friday tidal wave. Yet this year, many stores, including those that we chose, hardly made it out of the red. It was at this point that we, as a team, realized that we had to make a new strategy. We decided to buy stocks in companies like Johnson and Johnson, Apple, Consolidated Edison, Pfizer, and Scholastic. We chose these companies because we felt they met everyone’s basic needs; they were companies that produce common materials. Most people in the world rely on more than two of these companies for their basic needs daily. In addition, they were companies that other groups were investing in and making big money from.
In the future, I will study the market and news with a keener eye and precise detail. My group and I simply assumed that Black Friday would...