The investment project started when your account in ‘Rotman Portfolio Manager’ (RPM) resets to a cash balance of $500,000 on Friday in Teaching week 2, 10th March at 6 pm (AU time) and you started trading on the RPM platform from Monday 13th March. This is week 1 of your seven-week investment horizon.

You then take buy/sell/hold decisions of securities throughout each week over an investment period of seven weeks (including the semester break week). Your investment period ends on Saturday in teaching week 8, 29th April 2023. You were required to undertake at least 3 trades per week.

It is very important that you use the investment concepts that you learn in this unit in your buy/sell/hold strategies/decisions. These concepts include the following: financial instruments and markets; historical returns of various financial assets; risk aversion and capital allocation; assets allocation and security selection; risk-return trade-off; diversification and risk reduction; market risk and diversifiable risk; margin trading and short selling; fundamental analysis and any observable market anomalies; and equity valuation and detecting mispriced securities.

In addition, you should also monitor the performance of various stock markets, domestic/regional/global economies, and other domestic/regional/global events to develop a sense of what is happening before taking buy/sell/hold decisions.

You can invest a portion of your money in risk-free money market funds that will earn 1% per annum. The trading simulation has been set up assuming that the money that you did not invest in risky securities is invested in money market funds earning the above rate. This means that you do not need to specifically invest in money market funds.

However, the maximum amount you can invest in money market funds at any time is $100,000. This means that all the remaining money should be invested in risky securities. If you invest more than $100,000 in money market funds, you will lose 5% of your overall marks.