3. This exercise requires you to construct a portfolio using actual data. You may use Google finance or Yahoo finance to download historical data of any 5 stocks (preferably US stocks). You will download monthly historical stock price data for 5 years (60 observations per stock). Stock price should be adjusted for dividends.

a. On your excel file, label sheet 1 as Raw Data and add stock returns for the 5 stocks you have picked. Also find the average return and sample standard deviation for each stock.

b. On the same sheet, create a 5 by 5 variance covariance matrix. You can find sample variance and sample covariance using the returns data for each stock.

c. On a new sheet Portfolio Construction display a summary of stock returns and the stock variance-covariance matrix. Also, write out a 1 x 5 matrix of weights [1 2 5] that you will use in Excel to calculate the portfolio return and the portfolio standard deviation .

d. Find the portfolio return and standard deviation for an equally weighted portfolio, that is, 1 = 2 = 3 = 4 = 5 = 1 = 1 5 = 0.2

e. The equally-weighted stock portfolio doesnt have to be an efficient portfolio can you change weights (arbitrarily)1 to see if you can generate a better portfolio than the equally weighted portfolio?