Over the past six days, I’ve been teaching a highly compressed version of our Intro to Business course as part of Villanova’s Summer Business Institute. We’ve covered globalization, ethics, social responsibility, entrepreneurship, leadership, planning, operations management, marketing, and today we wrapped it up with accounting and finance.
For the finance part, I thought it would be fun and informative to have the students go into their virtual breakout rooms for a few minutes and as a team, decide on the one stock they would recommend right now. When they all came back to the main room, I had each team share what their stock choice was, and I thought you might be interested to see their choices. Note that all the links below go the Investor Relations page for the companies, as opposed to their normal consumer-facing home page.
- Peloton
- Inovio Pharmaceuticals
- Disney
- Norwegian Cruise Lines
- Adobe
- Shopify
- Johnson & Johnson
- 3M
- Dropbox
- any company Elon Musk is involved with
It’s a nice range of companies and industries, along with some bold bets. Despite my best efforts of trying to convince them every day how great Apple is, none of the teams chose Apple as their recommendation.
Perhaps I should create a mutual fund consisting of all these stocks and call it the SBI2020 fund. If it does well, I’ll have an all-expenses paid reunion with the students 10 years from now.
Who’s in?
Note: do not consider any part of this post to be an endorsement for these stocks. In fact, a good stock buying strategy for most people is to do the opposite of what I would do…
*image from the Motley Fool
p.s. written while listening to the Spotify playlist Deep Focus, found under the Focus genre. Quite pleasant, at multiple points while writing I was not even aware it was playing…
I think all of those stocks, plus about 10 more chosen at random, would work out well, as long as the investor buys them all equally, and holds them for a long time.
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Sounds like a nice way to diversify…
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That sounds like a fun exercise. If I were to invest (I do have some investments but none of these), I would put some money into Peloton. Exercising from home and competing with others (two big selling points, especially in a pandemic.)
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I agree; I just wish I had put the money into Peloton two or three months ago…
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Apple seems like a good bet, though I am not quite sure about the direction the company is going with their phone segment… Those are some interesting picks, though I am not in the stock game.
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I think they are trying to diversify beyond the phone segment into more service related lines, such as Apple TV+
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Okay, I don’t know why, but the term highly-compressed just plain sounds scary. This is an interesting experiment with an equally interesting result. I see the logic in some of the choices, buy low and sell high. And other companies who may well expect a boom in returns due to the manufacturing of pandemic related equipment. But it is an eclectic list for sure. Apple may fall into the same category as “any company the Elon Musk is involved in”. You definitely won’t be buying the stock in a price lull. But I agree both would be a continual rise in the ROI. Good to see you having some fun with your first virtual class. Your background music certainly had no impact on the entertainment value of your post. Well written, Jim!
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Thanks, Brad. As you note, it is an interesting collection of companies, and I was surprised that no two groups picked the same company. And thanks for noticing the mention of the music…
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quite the mix, and the only one i can see being iffy, is the cruise line. i’m not sure how long it will take before people will be willing to cruise again in big numbers. or does this have nothing to do with it? please advise.
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I know I have no desire to go on a cruise anytime soon… that seemed to be the riskiest of all the choices, but with high risk comes the potential for high reward…
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Jim put me in for $14.79 of the SBI2020 fund … about the current value of my Mutual Funds since tanking in mid-March. 😎
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We can guarantee you that you will not lose more than $15 on your investment…
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I think the music work! The post kept me there, tho I’m not at all interested in the topic. But now I may be a bit…
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I’m glad you stuck around to read the post. I’ve always found the stock market fascinating…
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I see what you mean, but I’m not the super-fan of “panic buying” (know it isn’t like that, but its kinda the way I see it)
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Think of it as taking advantage of the situation…
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Some interesting selections there. I’m not sure if Johnson & Johnson is a good bet at present, given the impending talc lawsuits, and a cruise line is a brave choice: but I guess their only way is up. I checked out the playlist – not a single piece or artist I’d ever heard of! I tried a couple, and think for me that might be more suitable as an aid to sleep rather than work!
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There were some interesting choices, and I think the cruise line is the riskiest, but offers perhaps the biggest upside potential. Not my cup of tea though. And as to the music, it wasn’t bad. It certainly was not distracting, which was my biggest worry…
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They are clearly hoping for a ‘buy low sell high’ win from it. It will be interesting and educative for them, and for you, to see how things develop with their choices. I’m glad the music didn’t disturb you – it was probably too bland to have an effect!
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who doesn’t like the strategy “buy ow, sell high” if only it were that easy. And bland may be one to describe it, but it wasn’t too bad, nor was last night’s classical music…
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Quite, but I’m sure you’re teaching them that. Classical is usually good, as long as it isn’t Bartok- mind you, I’m not sure the final part of the 1812 Overture is conducive to working 😉
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Hopefully they know that by the time they get to college…
And yes, the 1812 overture would seem to be quite distracting if you were trying to think!
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I’m sure they will, if you have anything to do with it. I once attended a live performance of the full 1812 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It has great acoustics and the finale, complete with indoor fireworks and explosions, was spectacular. I wasn’t working, though…
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That would be a performance I would love to see live as well, with all the bells and whistles, and cannons and explosions, and…
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The Norwegian Cruise Lines pick is interesting. I guess the students believe it can’t go much lower. They are young and time to recover from mistakes is on their side.
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exactly, that is what I try to impress upon them. if there is ever a time to take greater risk, it is when you are young.
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Did the music help with the writing at all?
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it didn’t hurt, which was a primary concern. I might try it one night with music that has lyrics – I think that would be too distracting…
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Yeah if you aren’t used to it the lyrics can be distracting.
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I’ll try it some night and let you know what happens…
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Ok let me know!
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Or how about an airline? Now is a good time to invest if you have money to burn. If I did I would buy unit trusts and take the guess work out of it.
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I am not familiar with unit trusts – is it something like a mutual fund?
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I would have to read up on what a mutual fund is.
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I just read about Unit Trusts they do seem quite similar to a mutual fund. Here’s a little blurb about mutual funds from the biggest mutual fund company in the U.S. – Vanguard: https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/
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Jim, your students’ list includes some safe bets and some bold ones. Elon Musk is on a roll with SpaceX, but the Norwegian Cruise Lines looks troublesome.I
When I was teaching high school business, I used to have a class sort of like yours. We covered a variety of business and economic-related topics. One unit was on investments where students chose five different stocks to track over several weeks.
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I agree that the Norwegian cruise line is quite a risky bet. Our courses do sound similar, and that sounds like a fun exercise to track five stocks…
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You have/had some good students! Looking at some of those investments in hindsight they are already good picks in this market, and it has only been a month! Tesla continues to hit new all time highs as well as Shopify. I think this is a good diverse mix and would have good returns in the long run. It’s amazing how good the stock market is at rewarding stocks with good financials.
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Thanks for the comment, Isaiah! Yes, we are blessed with good students. There was a nice mix of stock choices there, and they had the luck to be choosing at a time when the market was down from its recent highs.
I hope it got them interested in the market, and thinking long-term about their financial future…
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