Chapter Three: Methodology
3.1 Portfolio Formulation
We chose to invest only in financials due to our belief that financials would outperform
the market in general following the recession, that the slump in the equity market starting mid-
January was merely a correction after nine consecutive months of gain, and that the market
would start rallying again between mid-February and mid-April – within our simulation time
horizon.
We focused on mid- to large-cap U.S. financial firms so that the stock selection and
analysis would be less tedious given our workload and time-constraint. We also decided to start
by investing in diversified large-cap financial services companies to control the risk level. As we
gained more knowledge and skills in the simulation, we would gradually broaden our scope to
more specialized financial firms and thereby increase the sophistication of our investment
simulation.
3.2 Stock Selection
In our simulation, we used a combination of fundamental analysis and technical analysis.
Fundamental analysis was employed to determine the market direction and select individual
stocks; technical analysis to confirm the stock selections and time the trading of selected stocks.
Due to the time constraint of our simulation (about eight weeks), we focused on the shortterm
price movements of stock prices without excessive conviction about the stocks’ long-term
performance. Thus, in the fundamental analysis applied in the initial stage of our stock screening,