...Running Head: INVESTMENT STRATEGY TUI UNIVERSITY Ford Foundation Investment Strategy James J. Chapa FIN 504 Module 1 Case Assignment Dr. Geoffrey Clarkson January 24, 2009 The Ford Foundation’s investment policies are a critical component of continued organizational success. To support its wide range of programs, the Foundation relies on a solid financial foundation and reliable sources of income. Quality investments provide part of this critical revenue stream. Setting a solid investment strategy requires an understanding of investment fundamentals, coupled with the investment goals of the Foundation. Analysis of these concepts shows why the optimal investment strategy for the Ford Foundation differs from that of other organizations or even individual investors, as the unique goals of foundations require particular investment philosophies. The Foundation faces financial decisions concerning not only how to use money today, but how to manage money and assets saved for later use. The methods used to save or invest this capital have a dramatic effect on the Foundation’s ability to achieve its mission in the future. Inflation constantly threatens to erode the future purchasing power of today’s savings. All investors must find ways to “put their savings to work,” seeking rates of return that compensate or overcome the effects of inflation and ensure adequate funds exist to meet future needs. First, investors must determine their goals....
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...Personal Investment Project Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation 25th June 2016 Introduction When creating an investment policy statement, the first step is to consider an investor’s objectives, preferences, and constraints in investing. One should quantify and specify their investment needs and hence seek out those investments which meet these criteria. My personal investment strategy is based on the analysis of the company’s fundamentals and the macroeconomic environment in which it operates. As such, I invest in historically steady companies in less volatile industries. This strategy may be considered as fundamental investing. For this reason, I desire to invest in a company that has a proven track record of strong financial performance and operates in an industry that is not overly disruptive. For this project, I will elaborate this investment strategy with reference to the Coca-Cola Company, which is one of the companies I am interested in investing in. Coca-Cola (KO) is a well-known brand in the world, consistently ranked as the most valuable brand in the world by Forbes Magazine. Statement of Strategy and Investor Style In my investment strategy, the most important factors I consider are the company’s earnings performance, dividend payout, value of stock and the company’s market leadership in the industry it operates. Earnings Performance I also analyze the company’s earnings per share (EPS) to measure the profitability per unit of equity. High EPS means...
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...INVESTMENT STRATEGY AND PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT Executive Summary Kaplan is a charitable fund established in 2007 to provide an investment vehicle for investors seeking to finance some educational objectives. The aim of the fund is to grow members’ contributions through investment in securities. Investors in Kaplan are yet to start making withdrawals from the fund but are due to begin in June 2012. This report looks at current issues in the investment environment in the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world which have an impact on Kaplan’s operations. It also examines strategic asset allocation and investment strategies that Kaplan should employ to achieve its goals. In addition, the report recommends areas in which the fund’s management should actively manage investments and those areas in which passive management would be the better option. Overview of the Investment Environment In recent years, the global fund sector has continued to register robust growth in many countries with developed financial markets. Collective investment schemes are becoming the most preferred investment vehicles for investors because of their obvious advantages including diversification, professional management of investments, liquidity and investment advice for investors and superior returns (Roll, 2008). Indeed, as by the end of 2011, the global investment fund industry was worth US $11.7 trillion which translates to 17 percent of primary securities holdings around the world. However...
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...I am often asked which instruments make good investments. It may sound a bit dry but I have always said that it depends on what you have and what you need. This sounds like a cop out. It isn’t. The reality is that HOW you invest will be determined by: * How much you are investing * How big a loss you can afford to accept just in case, * How often you wish to generate returns, * How long you want to keep your investments, * How you react to uncertainties and * How much access you have to information that you would need to monitor and manage your investments. Investment gurus may impress you with their so-called secret methods, but the truth is, it’s all a question of how much you have and what it is for. Very few realize that this premise is based on the most basic principle in finance: diversity makes a market. Diversity breeds different instruments with different features to cater to the different needs of a diverse public. Diversity What does diversity have to do with investment options? That is like asking the difference between a happy employee who makes PhP10,000.00 a month and a grumpy executive who makes 20 times that amount. It’s all those dizzying zeros to the left of the decimal point and these can easily dictate how aggressive an investor you can be, the type of instruments you can consider in your portfolio and the returns that you can reasonably expect. If financial institutions describe you as a “high networth individual”...
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...Week 1 – Investment Portfolio Strategy Strategy: I will be using the bottom-up approach for my investment strategy. A Bottom up approach assumes that individual companies can do well even in an industry that is not performing very well. This is the opposite of "top-down investing". Making sound decisions based on a bottom-up investing strategy entails a thorough review of the company in question. This includes becoming familiar with the company's products and services, its financial stability and its research reports. The reason I have chosen the bottom- up approach for my strategy is simply because this approach focuses on the analysis of individual stocks. This allows me (the investor) to focus my attention on a specific company rather than on the industry in which that company operates or on the economy as a whole. The method in which I went about putting my strategy together was quite simple. I decided to familiarize myself with the different markets in the US and Europe and looked into the different denominations in each market. I then looked in the European Market at the companies in each of the Indices (FTSE 100, DAX & STOXX50) and chose companies who wore on either making a steady profit or breaking even and aspiring to make a profit soon. I also did the same for the American market and its indices (DOW, S&P 500 and NASDAQ). I focused my attention in particular to the big and well known multinationals to invest in such as Apple and Microsoft etc as I only...
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...MFIN7014 Fund Management and Alternative Investments Section 2A, 2015 Discussion paper I What macro information leads to long-term investment strategy? Shuqin Zhao Stu.ID: 3035236775 Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) as a professional investment management organization, it focuses on long investment horizon which gives it advantages on risk control and long-term opportunities over competitors. Longterm investment requires asset managers to be more sensitive to future economy trend. Ted Lee pointed out that for long-term view, US market continues to shrink, while the future three group countries will be China, India and Brazil, due to their low correlation with international capital which benefits the portfolio. While India and Brazil are respectively going through political change and recession, opportunities could be largely obsessed in the future, as seen by professionals. In 2015, most of money actually came from Asia, but this is not the only macroeconomy signals that lead to such certainty about future market segments. Based on conversation with Ted, I conclude another strong macro-economy signal as business development. On September 19th 2014, Alibaba IPO ranked as biggest IPO in the world after additional shares sold, which surpassed a previous global record set by Agricultural Bank of China Ltd in 2010. Looking through past five years, largest IPOs includes a lot of Chinese company, which indicates strong signal of fast development...
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...before a Crisis At many wealth-management institutions, particularly the larger ones, the continuity of client relationships has— over time—been disrupted by organizational changes and the shuffling of client portfolios among RMs. In some cases, the goal was to bind the client more to the institution than to an individual advisor. In other cases, however, the institution itself simply could not maintain a consistent service model. At the same time, investors became more interested in diversifying their wealth across institutions. And as information about financial products became more accessible, some investors became self-directed. They tended to be less interested in holistic planning and more interested in specific types of support or investment recommendations. The role of the RM has also changed. Since the beginning of the decade, the RM has become less of a confidant and more of a salesperson. This shift was most apparent in the brokerage model, where RMs began providing targeted product recommendations rather than trying to understand a client’s overall needs and priorities. The move to a product-push model was particularly pronounced in institutions with centralized asset-management departments that not only designed the products but decided which ones an RM should sell. The product-push model diverged from a focus on client relationships in three fundamental...
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...Does IT Matter? An essay presented to the Department of Information Systems University of Cape Town in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the course on Information Systems Honours (INF 414W) by ( March 200x Declaration 1. I know that plagiarism is wrong. Plagiarism is to use another’s work and pretend that it is one’s own. 2. I have used the APA Convention for citation and referencing. Each contribution to, and quotation in, this essay from the works of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced. 3. This essay is my own work. 4. I have not allowed, and will not allow, anyone to copy my work with the intention of passing it off as his or her own work Signature …………………….. Date ….../….../…...… Full name of student: A Table of contents 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………1 2. Resources: what makes them strategic?.....................................................1 1. Characteristics of Strategic Resources………………………..…………2 3. Strategic value of Information Technology………………………….………..2 4. The evolution of the IT function in business………………………………...4 5. Using IT to gain Sustainable Competitive advantage………...……………7 6. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….8 7. Bibliography………….………………………………………………………….9 ...
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...Corporate Strategy explores the question: In what set of businesses should a firm compete? Organizations routinely grow and change through merging with or acquiring other organizations, as well as through the internal creation of new divisions or subsidiaries. Through such activities, organizations can extend their core capabilities into new lines of business, expand their existing lines of business into new geographic areas, and improve the efficiency of existing businesses. Firms acquire, create, or merge with other organizations in order to improve the profitability of the overall corporation. The track record of corporate strategies, however, is not nearly as satisfying as its objectives. According to the best insights of research and practice, most mergers and acquisitions fail even to recover their costs. Hundreds of billions of dollars, against a base of a few trillion invested every year, are lost to poorly conceived or poorly executed corporate investments. For more than three decades, investors have routinely and systematically discounted the market value of acquiring or merging firms; nearly all gains in market value have gone to acquired firms, pre-merger or acquisition. This course is designed to introduce you to the central challenge of corporate strategy, which is the creation of a corporate advantage through investments in a set of businesses that are better off, individually or collectively, for being commonly owned. The goal is to deepen your...
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...what they plan on doing to reach their goal. Second, I will be talking about what Adidas plans on doing in reaching their goal. The goals of the two companies are really important because it will help us determine their business planning and strategies which will help them become a successful company in reducing competition. Nike Nike is planning on increasing its sales and will increase their sales by apparel investment, locations, and focusing more on the consumer. Nike plans to quadruple its apparel investment on the innovation side over the next five years (Ryan, 2010, p. 12). Nike wants to be able to overall boost sales and continue growing. The first step in increasing sales will be by the overall investment on apparel. From a strategy perspective, Nike has centralized its apparel team around the world and is reducing the number of styles, vendors and materials used to focus on top-selling items which include t-shirts, track jackets, etc (Ryan, 2010, p. 12). Apparel investment is one of the main goals for Nike; however, there are still many other growth opportunities that will help Nike with increasing sales. Furthermore, the company plans to grow the Nike brand through expanding it to more locations. Nike’s retail strategy in the U.S. is to run a small number of Niketown stores and sell mostly through national retail chains (Cendrowski, 2011, p. 23). Nike wants to be able to compete aggressively by developing new locations in different markets. Doing so, will really...
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...Functional strategies mainly focused on the events associated in practical areas of a business that support the anticipated competitive business level strategy and balance each other. These strategies describe the methods selected to be used within the practical areas of a business that’s utilized in the corporate level or business strategy. Functional strategies recognize and organize temporary actions, usually under a year. Structure of functional strategy is normally delegated by the business manager to lower management teams that oversee the operations of the business. Businesses vary in structure as well as the roles and responsibilities of their practice areas, these areas are research and development, marketing, finance, purchasing...
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...Tesco – The Entry Strategies Content * Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….2 * Background of Tesco…………………………………………………………….......3 * Entry strategies………………………………………………………………………....4 * How did Tesco enter Hungary? ......................................................5 * Tesco’s entry strategies ……………………………………………………….…....6 * Tesco’s failure…………………………………………………………………….…..….7 * Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….…..8 * References…………………………………………………………………………………9 Introduction Tesco is a very famous supermarket and it has stores all around the world(Clark 2008). There are a lot of entry strategies for one country to enter its brand to another country, so it is sure that Tesco and entry strategies can be combined together. This essay focused on the entry strategies that Tesco used to enter Hungary more than enter other countries. This essay introduced to you a few popular entry strategies, and explained why Tesco chose a particular entry mode to enter a country among all the possible choices. It also introduced to you what kinds of strategies Tesco had used to enter Hungary. The entry strategies do not always work, it sometimes failed. This essay also discussed Tesco’s failure, and the reason why caused Tesco’s failure. In other words, this essay is about introducing the entry strategies of Tesco. To make Tesco’s entry strategies as the topic, the first thing to do is to know Tesco very well. There are so many questions about...
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...CEO, he demanded that business unit heads present their proposed strategies in no more than a few slides. Executives who failed to meet Reed’s exacting standards for brevity met with his unconcealed displeasure. And if it happened too often, they ran the risk of being left out of the loop on future strategy sessions. Many leaders share Reed’s obsession with the big picture, yet our research shows that few companies actually have a clear strategic vision. The problem, we believe, stems from the strategic-planning process itself. The process usually involves the preparation of a large document—culled from a mishmash of data provided by people from various parts of the organization who often have conflicting agendas and poor communication. The report typically begins with a lengthy description of the industry and the competitive situation. There follows a discussion of how to increase market share here and there, capture new segments, or cut costs, which leads to an outline of numerous goals and initiatives. A full budget is almost invariably attached, as are lavish graphs and a surfeit of spreadsheets. No wonder so few strategic plans turn into action; executives are paralyzed by the muddle. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We suggest an alternative approach to strategic planning, based not on preparing a document but on drawing a picture we call a “strategy canvas.” This approach consistently produces strategies that are easy to understand and communicate, that engage more people...
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...also needed to consider its IBM mainframe and how to include it in the update of its IT infrastructure. The mainframe provided a strategic advantage in terms of processing power but did not have compatible software for implementing Internet-based applications that were needed to stay competitive. 2) What is the relationship of information technology to Merrill Lynch's business strategy? How was the web services initiative related to that strategy? The information technology used in Merrill Lynch's business has played an important role in the companies’ profitability. The business strategy is directly linked to the IT infrastructure because without their IBM mainframe installation they could not stay competitive and would not have all the tools they need to carry out their strategies. In fact, you can find several articles on their web site explaining the impact the IT has on the different sectors of the business. These articles illustrate the evolution of this company with technology adopted into its systems. The article explains how web services and SOA initiatives are related to that strategy. Crew knew that if he purchased a platform rather that adopting one from another the company would be able to deploy web services faster....
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...Introduction This case is about the 99 Cent Only Store’s supply chain business model and how competitive advantage is executed within the context of its information systems (IS) strategies. Founder David Gold’s model is to create a straight path between a low-priced item and a paying customer. Under the tutelage of Robert Adams, vice president of IS, notes “bleeding edge technology (Oz, 2009 p. 73) is unnecessary, rather integration of information technology (IT) with a high rate of return on investment (ROI), which achieves the goal of efficiency is implemented. The specific action of avoiding progressive technology provides a supply chain advantage system. Instead of relying on new and specifically made software, Adams utilizes ready made products, which can be tailored to 99 Cent’s needs, such as HighJump’s Warehouse Advantage. Adam who is a software developer by trade, supervises an IT team who ensures the ISs are accommodating and inexpensive for the organizations needs, the most prevalent is optimum efficiency. According to authors Effy Oz and J. Rae-Supree, 38 new 99 Cent stores opened in 2003, revenues amounted to over 1.1 billion (Oz, 2009 p. 72), but only $5 million dollars was spent in IT. Research from the companies 10-K form shows, that from 2009 through 2012, significant investment in various “infrastructure, data management, and process improvement projects…enabling the achievement of level one compliance with Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards” (99, 2012)...
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