Question

Go to Yahoo! Finance, linked in Resources.

Find a stock beginning with the letter 'G'

Search your chosen stock. When you find it, click on the Historical Data tab to access historical stock price.

Gather five years of daily adjusted stock price data by selecting the appropriate dates through the Time Period link. Be sure the end date includes days in this course (Sept 28).

Click on the Download Data link to save the data to your computer. The file will be saved so that it can be opened in Excel.

Conduct a descriptive analysis by doing (at a minimum) the following:

Calculate the mean, median, mode, range, and standard deviation of the adjusted daily closing price for this stock. Interpret these statistics and discuss their relevance. Is the mode useful? Why or why not?

Produce a histogram for the adjusted daily closing price. Be sure you have enough bins, so that you can see the shape of the data. Describe the shape of the data. What does this tell you about the stock?

Produce a boxplot for the adjusted daily closing price. Interpret it. Note: this may be problematic for some of you who are using Excel. You may produce it manually if you cannot generate it automatically.

Produce a time plot (scatter plot) of the closing date versus the stock price. How has the stock trended over time? Are there patterns?

Summarize what descriptive analysis revealed about the adjusted daily closing stock price.

Answer 1

Stock: General Motors Company (GM)

Deleting columns that are not required:

Data - Data Analysis - Descriptibe Statistics - Summary Statistics

There is not significant difference between mean, median and mode.

Since data is slightly positively skewewd. Mean > Median > Mode

Long tail of the distribution in positive direction this is because of data showing upward trend from June-2016.

Select Data - Insert- Recommended Charts - Histogram

Data is positively skewed and kurtosis a bit greater than 3. Positive skewness implies a long right tail, which can mean a greater chance of extremely positive outcomes. Leptokurtic (Kurtosis >3) distributions have one or both tails fatter than normal distribution, implying a higher likelihood of extreme returns.

Box Plot:

New Box: with data as shown:

Quartile 1 by using excel function: QUARTILE.INC($B$2:$B$1261,1)

Quartile 2 by using excel function: QUARTILE.INC($B$2:$B$1261,2)

Select the data adjusted close: Recommended Charts - All Charts - Box and Whisker:

Outliers in excel are detrmined based on Inter Quartile Range i.e. Quatile 3 - Quartile 1

= 33.924 - 28. 533 = 5.390

Outliers if greater than: 1.5 * Inter quartile Range + Quartile 3 = 1.5 * 5.390 + 22.924 = 42.009

and if less than: Quartile 1 - 1.5* Inter quartile Range = 28.533 - 1.5 * 5.3690 = 20.45

Select Data - Insert - Sctter - Selct the line in the graph - right click - Add trend line.