1) Collect historical data (past data) for the close prices of 4 firms in any stock market that you like. You should collect daily data for the last 3 years, namely for the period 1 June 2020- 1 June 2023. You should include and show me all the data that you have collected and also tell me the source of the data. One source that I can suggest is Yahoo!Finance, which is a webpage that includes historical prices that you can easily download and get ready in an Excel file. You can also try the official stock market webpage of any stock market (e.g. London Stock Exchange, Cyprus Stock Exchange etc.), where you can find the historical data for all the stocks that trade and again they will be ready in an excel format. Notice that in your sources you will probably find open price, close price, High price, Low price, etc. You should take only the close price, which is the last price of the trading day. 2) Write a paragraph for each stock that you have selected (e.g. the name of the company, the industry it belongs to, information that you consider interesting about the company and the reasons that you have selected each stock). Notes: a. The data that you will collect will be used in Part 2 of the project, as well. b. If you have any missing data, you should replace them with the averages of the neighboring values (for example if you have the price for June 1 and June 3, but you dont have the value for June 2, you can take the average of the values in June 1 and June 3 and replace the value for June 2 with this average). Official holidays of the stock market (no trading days, e.g. 1st of May) are not considered missing values. Missing values are only cases where for an unknown reason a value was not recorded in the file for a specific date. c. You can use Excel for your calculations. 3) Transform all the close PRICES into stock RETURNS by using the appropriate formula ( = ), where Pt is the price on day t and Pt-1 is the price on the previous day (day t-1). 4) Calculate the average daily return for each of the 4 firms (e.g., in Excel you can use the function called AVERAGE or you can take the sum and divide by the number of data for each stock/column). 5) Similarly calculate the standard deviation for each of the 4 firms (in Excel you can find a function called STDEV, so that you dont need to use the formula for the standard deviation). 2 Notes written by Dr. Haritini Tsangari for MBA-721 6) Calculate the correlation between all the stocks (again in Excel you can find the corresponding function, e.g. CORREL). All the above will give you the characteristics of your stocks. Make the necessary comments about your results. Notice also that the sample characteristics that you have calculated can be used as estimates for the expected performance of the stocks. For example, the average return that you calculated for each firm can be used as the estimate of the expected return and the standard deviation can be used as an estimate of the risk of the stock. This is called Historical Analysis, in other words you are using past information for a stock to see what you would expect from it in the future, in case you decide to invest in it. You need to prepare two files, an Excel file with the calculations/results and a Word or pdf file for the presentation of your results and your comments. These are files that will be uploaded together with the files of Part 2