Finance investment assignemt

*Hints added by the professor
Helpful Hint #1 -- Mutual Fund Project
Posted on: Thursday, October 31, 2013
Here is a hint for your mutual fund project. Begin by focusing on the first instruction -- your investment process. Once you have thought through the steps we discussed in class and written them down in a coherent manner, you will have a better idea how to filter down more quickly to the kinds of mutual funds that match your needs and objectives.

Helpful Hint #2 -- Mutual Fund Project
Posted on: Thursday, October 31, 2013
Finding Prospectuses and Reports.

Each mutual fund company will put things in different places on their website. If you want to find Prospectuses, Annual Reports, etc., you usually have to first find a particular fund. Here is an example for the T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth Fund (symbol TRBCX). Go through these pages to see a good representation of what you'll find in a Prospectus and an Annual Report.

Go to www.troweprice.com
Toward the top left, you will see a button labeled "Mutual Funds". Click on it.
Select "Domestic Stock Funds".
Select "View all T.Rowe Price Domestic Stock Funds".
The first fund at the top of the list is the Blue Chip Growth Fund. Just below the fund listing is a tab marked "Prospectus and Reports". Click on that.
You'll see three choices: Prospectus, Annual Report, Semi-Annual Report. Click on Prospectus.
NOTE: Page numbers referred to below are the Adobe page number, not the page number of the report.

The front cover shows the fund's objective.
Page 3 shows the objectives and fees.
Page 4 shows Investments, Risk, and Performance
Page 6 discusses the fund's manager.
Page 7 discusses the Fund's distributions.
Page 14 tells how dividends are paid on the fund.
Page 25 describes the fund's organization and management.
Page 27 gives a caution warning to equity investors.
Page 28 tells the fund's investment policies.
Page 29 details the types of securities in this fund.
Page 38 shows the fund's Financial Highlights, including the Portfolio Turnover Rate.
If you click on Annual Report instead of Prospectus, you will find the following:

Page 3: The fund manager's letter to the shareholders of the fund.
Page 8: The fund's strategy.
Page 14: The risks of stock investing.
Page 15: The largest holdings in the fund.
Page 16: The biggest changes in the portfolio over the past year.
Page 18: An example of the Fund's expenses.
Pages 23+: A schedule of the investments in the fund's portfolio.

Helpful Hint #3 -- Mutual Fund Project
Posted on: Monday, November 4, 2013
Students,

In today's Wall Street Journal, there is an article on mutual fund prospectuses that should be helpful to you. If you go to wsj.com, in the upper right hand corner there is a Search function. Type in "ten things", and one of the first articles listed is "Ten things a Fund Prospectus Won't Tell You". You'll see many of the things we have previously discussed in class. You should be able to pull up this article even if you don't have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal.