Please solve the entire 8 problems or do not submit.

Pick three companies as follows from Yahoo! Finance website: (a) SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (ticker = SPY) as our proxy for the market portfolio Note that ideally, we would use the S&P 500 Index (ticker=^GSPC) to proxy for the market portfolio. However, since Yahoo! Finance has disabled the download button on their website, we can use this S&P 500 ETF (SPY) which benchmarks the S&P 500 Index. b) Pick Company 1, a company of your choice and note the Sector and Industry to which it belongs. Hint: Go to Yahoo! Finance website, enter the ticker symbol under Quote Lookup. Then, click on Profile to check the sector/industry it belongs to). c) Pick Company 2 that belongs to a different sector or industry than Company 1. d) Enter the name of the two companies you selected, along with their ticker symbol and sectors, under Mini-case 1 (State names of selected companies) Forum. (2) Download the MONTHLY price data for the 01/01/2017 12/31/2021 period for the three securities. Instructions on how to download price data from Yahoo! Finance website: i. Go to Yahoo! Finance website, enter the securitys ticker symbol in Quote Lookup box. Then, click on Historical Data. Enter Time Period as given above. For Frequency, make sure Monthly is selected and then click on Apply. Next, click on Download. A ticker.csv file will be downloaded. ii. Save your file as a .xls or .xlsx file before you start anything very important step! Comma delimited (.csv) files do not retain the formulae and cell references after closing the file. You will receive a grade of zero if your excel file does not contain cell references and formulae that show how you arrived at the various answers. iii. You only need the Date and Adj Close columns. Copy over the Date and Adj Close columns of the three securities into a single excel so you can do the analysis. (Note: the Adj Close column in Yahoo! Finance has already adjusted the prices for dividends and stock splits so you do not have to adjust for it again. [3) Calculate the MONTHLY return data for the 01/01/2017 12/31/2021 period for the selected three securities. Note: Return for Month 2 = (Adj Close for Month 2/Adj Close for Month 1) 1 [4) Calculate the average arithmetic monthly return, variance, and standard deviation of returns for 01/01/2017 12/31/2021 period for the selected three securities.

Mini-case 1 Real-world Application: Risk and Return Dr. Darshana Palkar (5) Calculate the covariance and correlation of returns between Company A and Company B for the 01/01/2017 12/31/2021 period. What does the correlation indicate? (6) Calculate the stock betas for Company A and Company B for the 01/01/2017 12/31/2021 period. What do the betas indicate?

Remember that we have used SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (ticker = SPY) as our proxy for the market portfolio. What should go in the known-xs array and what should go in the known-ys array? (7) Suppose you invest 50% in Company A and 50% in Company B. What is your portfolio average return and standard deviation? (8) Compare the average return and standard deviation of Company A and Company B from #4 with the portfolio average return and standard deviation from #7. What do you observe? What can you conclude from your findings?