StraightArrow Banking & Investments competes with EndRun Financial Services in the Tri-Cities area. Currently, StraightArrow is featuring its StraightDeal investment fund. Open StraightDeal.pdf and review the claims and supporting data for the fund. Compare those claims and data to the claims and data that EndRun provides for the Happy Bull and Worried Bear Funds. Then answer the following:

1. Is the StraightArrow StraightDeal fund a better investment than either of the EndRun funds? Support your answer by performing an appropriate analysis and summarizing your results.

2. Before making a decision about which fund makes a better investment, you decide that you need a reliable forecast for the direction of the economy in the next year. After further investigation, you find that the consensus of leading economists is that the economy will be expanding in the next year. You also find out that in the past, when there has been a recession, leading economists predicted an expanding economy 10% of the time. When there was a stable economy, they predicted an expanding economy 50% of the time, and when there was an expanding economy, they predicted an expanding economy 75% of the time. When there was a rapidly expanding economy, they predicted an expanding economy 90% of the time. Does this information change your answer to Question 1? Why or why not?