The document provides instructions for a group assignment assessing students' investment strategies and performance. It consists of three parts: (1) critical analysis of another group member's investment journal; (2) identification of best and worst performing stocks from group members and analysis of factors influencing performance; (3) analysis of two data storage companies based on a video interview and recommendations to buy, hold, or sell the stocks. The assignment aims to simulate business practices and evaluate students' understanding of investment concepts.

1. Page 1 of 3
Assignment and Submission - MAF307
1 The assignment is compulsory. To reduce our carbon
footprint, all assignments are to be
submitted electronically through dropboxes in Cloud Deakin
(CD). No hardcopy assignment
submission is required.
2. The assignment due date is 11:59pm, 16 September (Friday).
You should be aware of
your eligibility for special consideration (see the Deakin
University Handbook). Otherwise, in
no case will the extension be granted for the assignment
completion and submission.
3. To reflect the manner in which most corporations conduct
business, students shall form
groups of four to handle this assignment. It is up to the students
to form the groups. Faculty
members will not entertain requests relating to group formation.
4. Once a group is formed, you are required to register into a
group under “Groups” on CD,
which also aids you to successfully submit your assignment.
5. If you submit work to be marked after the due date you w ill

2. incur a deduction of 20%
from the total marks, for each calendar day of the week the
assignment is late, for up to 5
calendar days. Further, we will not accept any submission after
11:59pm on Wednesday (21
September). For example, if the due date is Friday 16th
September 2016 and you do not
have an extension approval from the Unit Chair and hand your
work in late on the next day
which is Saturday 17th September 2016, 20% of the total marks,
equivalent of 4 marks, will
be deducted. If your work is marked as worthy of a grade of 16,
you will only receive 12 for
it after applying the penalty.
6. CloudDeakin submission: Each group needs submitting only
once. Please use your IDs
naming your files, such as
700374***_600039***_210039***_3600589***_MAF307_Rep
ort_2015T1.doc(x).
7. A copy of the assignment must be kept by students to cover
the possibility of lost
assignments.
Good luck.

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DEAKIN UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF BUSINESS & LAW
SCHOOL OF ACCOUNTING ECONOMICS& FINANCE
MAF307 EQUITIES AND INVESTMENT ANALYSIS
ASSIGNMENT - Trimester 2, 2016
This written assignment has three parts:
PART I
In order to approximate business practice, where an individual's
performance evaluation
reflects not only the opinion of supervisors but also that of his
or her peers, group members
shall evaluate one another’s investment journals. Each group
member has to critically
analyse another member’s investment strategy, including, but
not limited to, comparing
their investment performance, return expectations, risk appetite,
frequency of trading,
stock selection decisions, those investment strategies that

4. worked and those that failed.
Students can choose to make their analysis based on the two
submitted journals, or based
on the entire six weekly journals if a group member happens to
have one.
Students can use this written analysis as the base to articulate
their oral presentation.
Please keep the overall length of your group oral presentation to
approximate five minutes
(Hint: Most estimated the number of words/minute around 100.)
(Word limit guidance - 800, 5 marks)
PART II
(a). Identify the best- and worst-performing shares from your
group members. Assess
whether the different performance is due to the different impact
on the shares brought by
1). macroeconomic environment; 2). industry/sector life cycle;
3) government or the central
bank’s policies; 4). foreign economic influence; 5). firm
specific policy or action, etc.
(b). Use last 2-year daily prices data to calculate the above
shares’ returns and variances or
standard deviations. Examine and comment on whether your
group’s best- and worst-
performing shares can be identified from this information.
(Hint: The daily prices can be
drawn from websites such as Yahoo finance, Google finance or
the Australian Financial
Review, etc.)

5. (Word limit guidance - 1000, 7 marks)
Page 3 of 3
PART III
As an analyst for Vandelay brokerage firm, your supervisor has
handed you a video clip – an
interview between Ticky Fullerton of The Business of ABC, and
the fund manager, Roger
Montgomery (You need to watch it first. You can access the
video file in the same folder). During the
interview, Roger Montgomery raised several share names in the
data centre storage business. Focus
on the following two stocks, NXT (NextDC) and VOC (Vocus
Communications). Your supervisor
asked you to write a report: i). to find the share prices of the
above two stocks at the time of the
interview (say, around 25th April of 2013) and their current
stock prices. What do you find? ii). to
examine and investigate the background and reasons (or risk
factors) behind this dramatic
share price difference. What are the reasons, if any, resulting in
the price dispersion? iii). to
assess the following statement: share prices fully reflect all
available information on a
particular share according to the efficient market hypothesis

6. (EMH) (Bodie et al (1997). If
this is the case, can you find any evidence to support that the
market was fully informed?
Does the EMH mean anything to you in explaining the share
price difference? Why and/or
why not? iv). to make a recommendation for both stocks based
on your research on behalf of your
firm to your clients – to buy hold or sell.
(Word limit guidance - 1200, 8 marks)
Reference
Zvi Bodie, Mohamed Arif, Raymond da Silva Rosa, Alex Kane
and Alan J Marcus (2007), Investments,

7. McGraw-Hill Irwin Australia.
tmp47759bcb/ABC Business.mov