Assume that you have fallen into a windfall (an unexpected gift) of $80,000 Canadian with the only condition attached to it being that you must invest a minimum of five years.

 

You may NOT add any of your own money nor borrow additional money for this investment. You are also restricted to investing into one or two investments of the following types: stocks (tech stocks and oil/gas companies listed on a Canadian exchange only; each individual stock counts as one of your maximum two investments), and ETFs (but not index funds, no mutual funds that are not publicly traded on exchanges; each separate ETFs counts as one of your maximum two investments).  No other types of investments are permitted.  You may choose to leave the money invested beyond the time indicated if you wish.  NOTE:  Pick a SPECIFIC stock/fund.  You are not saying “I will invest in stocks”, for example, you are saying “I will invest in The Mosaic Company stocks”.

 

Write a paper discussing your investment decision. It should contain:

 

  1. An analysis of yourself as an investor, discussing your investment priorities and reasoning (as long as is necessary).
  2. A discussion of the general categories of investments that you might choose and why (or why not) they are attractive.
  3. A discussion of the alternatives that you seriously considered.
  4. Your investment decision.

 

You may use any available information regarding the investments.  Good sources include:

  • newspapers and periodicals
  • websites such as sedar.com or www.wikinvest.com (and others) and the websites of the companies whose stocks you are considering purchasing

 

Assume that you will be investing the money on the due date of the assignment so you won’t necessarily know the exact state of the market at that time, but you will know its general direction.

 

If your investment is denominated in US dollars (remember the stocks/ETFs you pick must be listed on a Canadian exchange only, but it is possible for the stocks to be dual listed in exchanges in the US too), you should consider the effects of exchange rate risk on your investment.

 

Typically a successful assignment will be in the 5-8-page range, single spaced.  Be sure to discuss the reasons for your choices, and how you are narrowing down the field of options relative to the criteria you have for your investment’s performance.