PAPER FOR HONORS COLLEGE STUDENT: COUNTRY REPORT

You will write a report on a specific national market. Your targeted audience is a busy U.S. investor. You should provide some historical and current political details, describe the economic and financial environment, and the prospects of your chosen country. Finally, you should provide the U.S. investor two stock recommendations.
Note: The national stock market you choose cannot be the stock market of your country of origin or residence.

A. Necessary Information
  • anticipated GDP or GNP growth.
  • monetary policy. You should provide an evaluation of inflationary prospects, interest
  • wages and employment conditions. It is important to know the relative wage with respect to other countries.
  • social and political situation. The goal is to try to evaluate country risk.
  • competitiveness. You should provide an evaluation of productivity.
  • fiscal situation. Describe the government budget situation. You might also want to discuss tax issues, which should include incentives to investment and foreign investment.

    Sources: You can obtain this information from the IMF, reports by the World Bank, OECD, etc. The Economist and Euromoney periodically publish country reports.

    B. Figures or Graphs
    1. Macroeconomic Indicators (4 years of history + forecasts):
    2. Market Indicators (4 years of history + forecasts, if available):
    3. Stocks (4 years of history + forecasts, if available):
    Sources: same as above + Financial Times, Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, country reports.

    C. Text
    You should discuss the political and economic background of the country current situation, which includes:
  • Macroeconomics
  • Sectorial analysis
  • Country risk
  • Taxes
  • Exchanges rates

    Recommendation: based on your analysis you pick a pair of stocks and explain why. You should also include financial data -i.e., revenues, earnings, PE, etc.- for those stocks you recommend.

    D. Practical Issues
  • The text cannot have more than five pages.
  • There are more than 1800 ADRs in the U.S. Chances are that you will find the most important stocks in your chosen country listed in the NYSE, AMEX or NASDAQ.
  • You have to provide a recommendation.
  • The Internet is a very valuable source.


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