Monetary policy in the US, especially the desire to increase interest rates, will have international repercussions. One of these will be to strengthen an already strong dollar. Please discuss the consequences of increasing interest rates on the US economy, taking into consideration the global ramifications.You must start a thread before you can read and reply to other threads

Visit one of the websites below to find a finance article that interests you. Yahoo! Finance (finance.yahoo.com) MarketWatch (www.marketwatch.com) Click on “Markets,” “Personal Finance,” or “Economy” Motley Fool (www.fool.com) Click on any sections at the top or see the Trending section Other credible financial sites In at least one page (double-spaced) in a Word document, write a summary of your chosen article. Describe the main purpose of the article and three ideas or issues you learned about. Explain how each idea affects the financial markets.

Analysis of risk and return, portfolio diversification Here you will apply what you have learned about portfolio theory. Use the monthly-adjusted closing prices for IBM, MSFT, And the S&P500 during the five-year period from January 2013 – December 2017 in the file “Stock Project Stock Prices” posted on Canvas. Calculate returns for each month for each of these three assets (Stock 1; Stock 2; S&P 500). Exercise 1: Calculate the following for each asset (in Excel, using the statistical functions given in parentheses): average return (AVERAGE), standard deviation of returns (STDEV.S), and variance of returns (VAR.S). What is the covariance (COVAR.S) and correlation (CORREL) between the returns of stock 1 and stock 2? Exercise 2: Calculate the return and standard deviation of a portfolio that holds these two stocks in the following weights: 0%-100%; 10%-90%; 20%-80%; 30%-70%; 40%-60%; 50%-50%; 60%-40%; 70%-30%; 80%-20%; 90%-10%, 100%-0%. Plot these portfolio return / standard deviation combinations. Make sure return is on the vertical axis and standard deviation is on the horizontal axis. (Important: use a scatterplot) (You may use excel for this part) Exercise 3 1. Which specific combination would deliver the least amount of risk? Use the formula for the minimum variance portfolio (show your work) to get the exact weights, calculate its return, standard deviation and Sharpe ratio (show your work by hand), and mark it by hand on your plot printout. 2. Draw in the CAL (by hand) that gives you the best risk-return combinations, given that the monthly risk free rate is 0.15%. Mark the optimal risky portfolio. Calculate the optimal risky portfolio’s weights (show your work by hand) in the two stocks (using the book’s formula 6.10). For this optimal portfolio, calculate the average return, standard deviation, and Sharpe ratio (show your work). Mark the ORP on the plot printout by hand. 3. Mark the spot on your return / standard deviation plot where the market index (i.e. S&P 500) falls. 4. For a moment, assume the correlation between the two stocks equals exactly 1. Graph the investment opportunity set. (Hint: This does not require any additional excel work or calculations) 5. Now assume the correlation between the two stocks equals exactly –1. Again, graph the investment opportunity set. If you would like, you can perform steps 4 and 5 on the same graph. What to hand in: A hard copy of your plot, results, and detailed analysis --- this means you should clearly show all of your work! Write out all equations that you use, with the exception of those that are functions in excel such as AVG, COVAR, VAR, etc. For example, you need to write out the equations for portfolio return, portfolio standard deviation, and show all your calculations in determining the MVP and ORP.