Purpose

This assessment item is a powerpoint slidedeck of the student's views in relation to the six $(6)$ geographical regions of $[1]$ Australia, $[2]$ USA, $[3]$ Eurozone, $[4]$ Japan, $[5]$ China, and, $[6]$ Emerging Markets around the world. The slidedeck needs to consider the current global investment environment, including macroeconomic themes, current monetary policy settings, current political factors, and how these factors will affect the performance of the respective asset classes in each geographical region over the next $12$ months.

In the analysis of the six $(6)$ geographical regions, students need to consider the following factors and their respective importance to current market circumstances and expectations of the future:

$(1)$ Equity markets of each region.

$(2)$ Bond markets in each region.

$(3)$ A nation's or region's monetary policy settings.

$(4)$ A nation or region's fiscal policy settings.

$(5)$ A country or region's macroeconomic variable, gross domestic product $($GDP$),$ which measures economic growth.

$(6)$ A country or region's macroeconomic variable, consumer prices index $($CPI$),$ which measures inflation.

$(7)$ Exogenous shocks that may impact various economies and$/$or geographical regions.

$(8)$ Geopolitical risks that may impact the various geographical regions.

$(9)$ International interactions that may impact the various geographical regions.

Every powerpoint slide will be assessed on whether it is of industry$-$standard in terms of presentation, style, colour and format. The four $(4)$ criteria used for this evaluation is as follows:

$[$i$]$ The format and presentation of each slide is of industry$-$standard. Please refer to the EXEMPLAR slidedeck as an example.

$[$ii$]$ The student must construct all of their own graphs and do all of the calculations using Microsoft Excel which is the industry$-$standard software used in the global finance industry.

$[$iii$]$ The student must construct all of their own tables using either Microsoft Word or Microsoft Powerpoint which is the industry$-$standard software used in the global finance industry.

$[$iv$]$ All data employed must be properly sourced in each graph or table with the full reference detailed in one of the appendices.