Original Question: Is Positive Beta Better than Negative Beta? A Beta factor represents risk in a financial instrument or commodity. Explain the reasons for changes in beta and explain if one should be more concerned with a negative versus positive factor. Be sure to reference volatility. Please provide an example of negative Beta. Student Number #1 Response: Beta is the measure of volatility or systematic risk of a security as compared to the whole market (Bates, Kidwell, Parrino, 2015). It is often used to calculate expected returns and beta that is less than 1 is less likely to be volatile while a beta over 1 will be more volatile than the market. An investor should be concerned with negative and positive factors of securities because this will determine how someone chooses to invest. A stock with a positive beta that is greater than one may be more volatile with higher risk but also offer higher returns, examples would be something like tech stocks as opposed to utilities stocks which usually have a beta of less than one and offer more stability but a lower rate of return. A good example of negative beta would be bonds in a portfolio which has the characteristics of negative beta because it usually moves opposite of the market (Caplinger, 2012). By having bonds which provide negative beta in a portfolio like a 401k it kind of offers some protection against positive beta which because of their volatility can make and lose a lot of value. The bonds with negative beta can act as a counter balance insuring that even though there will not be a high return rate there will also not be huge losses. References: Bates, T. Kidwell, D. Parrino, R. (2015). Fundamentals of Corporate Finance. 3rd Edition. Retrieved 04/27/2016 Caplinger, D. (2012). Negative beta stocks: Worth buying? Retrieved 04/27/2016 from http://www.fool.com/investing/beginning/2012/12/12/negative-beta-stocks-worth-buying.aspx Student Number #2 Response: Anyone who plays the stocks has a firm understanding of beta. One can look at the beta of a stock to get a better understanding of how the stock reacts to the market. According to investopedia.com, "Beta is calculated using regression analysis, and you can think of beta as the tendency of a security's returns to respond to swings in the market. A beta of 1 indicates that the security's price will move with the market. A beta of less than 1 means that the security will be less volatile than the market. A beta of greater than 1 indicates that the security's price will be more volatile than the market. For example, if a stock's beta is 1.2, it's theoretically 20% more volatile than the market" (2015). While a beta factor represents a risk, there is such a thing as a negative beta. According to blogspot.com, "By that definition, any investment that when added to a portfolio, makes the overall risk of the portfolio go down, has a negative beta. A more intuitive way of thinking about this is that a negative beta investment represents insurance against some macro economic risk that affects the rest of your portfolio adversely. A standard example that is offered for a negative beta investment is gold, which acts as a hedge against higher inflation (which devastates financial investments such as stocks and bonds). It is also true that puts on stocks and selling forward contracts against indices will have negative betas" (2009). When there is a negative beta, this means that the overall rate on return of the investment has been reduced. In the example of gold, the rate of return on the investment of gold is typically low, thus, making it a potentially poor investment. Reference: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/beta.asp http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2009/02/can-betas-be-negative-and-other-well.html

Talk to your parents, grandparents, and/or other older relatives or family friends to find out what they can tell you about your family's heritage or genealogy (a history of the ancestry or descent of a person or family). Using whatever resources you can find, tell your family's cultural history in a PowerPoint presentation consisting of 7-10 slides. Feel free to include pictures to illustrate your story, though take into consideration file size when you add pictures. The format and content for your presentation is outlined below:Introduction (1 slide)Give your presentation a title and include your name. This is a good opportunity to include a family photo or other picture that demonstrates your cultural heritage.Family Structure (1 slide)Describe your family make-up: number of people/ages, family heredity, relatives in other countries, etc.Ethnicity (2-3 slides)Discuss your family's ethnic background. Some questions to consider: What are the different ethnicities in your family that you and your family members know of? How important are the issues of ethnicity and ethnic heritage in your family? Do you observe particular customs because of your ethnic heritage? Are there family stories involving immigration to the U.S. or movement from one part of the U.S. to another? Did your family and/or ethnic group encounter prejudice or discrimination? If so, describe those encounters. If not, why not?Gender Issues (1 slide)Discuss how gender roles have been distributed in your family. Has this changed over time or through generations? Is there an ethnic component to the way gender roles have been defined in your family?Economic and Social Class (1-3 slides)Describe what social class you consider your family to belong to and why. Has your family been upwardly or downwardly mobile during your lifetime or across generations? What kinds of occupations have your family members held? Address the way class status has affected your family and whether this status is also affected by ethnicity. You can also explore how your family's educational achievements have changed over time.Conclusion (1 slide) Discuss what you have learned from researching your family's heritage. In what way are the different elements you've explored (social class, gender, and ethnicity) connected?In each slide, list a few bullet points and use the Notes feature (located below each slide) to type commentary on the points in your bullets. Avoid trying to cram lots of text onto the slide itself. I'm puerto rican born in ny my parents were born in puerto rico