Understanding finance begins by reading reputable articles in newspapers/magazines such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, US News and World Report, and other web based resources.

POST #1 Find an article that interests you and write 3 paragraphs. Your format should be:

INTRODUCTION: Briefly introduce the article (author, date) and the major financial topic it attempts to address (bankruptcy, merger, financial crisis, financial literacy, a specific company).

MAJOR TAKEAWAYS: Discuss the 3-5 points the article made about the financial topic.

CONCLUSION: What did you learn about finance and did the article address the question it posed?

Include APA CITATION at the end of the post.

POST #2 AT LEAST ONE MORE POST: Respond to another person’s post with an article or video reinforcing that post or extending the conversation. For example, you could say “Hi Cathy, I really enjoyed your post on Apple reaching $1 trillion this past week. Thank you for your research. I recently reviewed a short article which walks through the history of Apple’s financial success.Statista.com (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. reports a wonderful chart on the history of Apple and its successes on the way to $1 trillion. Some analysts actually believe that when Petrochina launched its IPO in 2007, it surpassed the $1 trillion mark then. Thanks! Anne

Citation: Imbert, F. (2018, August 3). The first company to reach $1 trillion in market value got crushed. Retrieved from https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstocks/the-firs… (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..

** note

Find article Try to find something within the last 3 months or so. and Respond to another person’s post

respond to (This week, I choose an article focused on one specific company and the article focuses and tries to address the topic of financial literacy on that one company for next year. The article I choose is titled A Closer Look At Disney’s Fiscal 2019. The article was published under Forbes’ website and the author is Trefis Team under the Freap Speculation Contribution group. It was published on November 12, 2018.

The article was very detailed and analytical of Disney’s performance, predictions, and analysis on current announcements. The first major takeaway I had from this article is regarding their actual fourth quarter results.Their revenue increased by 12% year-over-year to $14.3 billion. Their operating income grey by 17% year-over-year to $3.3 billion. Their EPS also rose by 40% year-over-year. These are strong financials for the fourth quarter and exceeded the analysts’ predictions.These could be attributed to Studio Entertainment and Parks and Resorts strong performance. The second major takeaway from the article is related to another initiative the company is launching. According to the article, the company will be launching a direct-to-customer service called Disney+. The initiative is expected to launch in the U.S. late next year. This is a new feature that I was not aware of, and according to the analysis this will help the company have solid financial statements next year as well. The third major takeaway that I had from the article is regarding their stock price. Disney’s stock price grew by more than 5% over the 2018 year. This is attributed to the company’s new online streaming media service and their acquisition of many assets from Fox. This was yet another initiative that I did not know about, and that will have a lot of influence on their 2019 financials due to the unfinished closing deal of Fox’s asset acquisition. Overall, even though it will be difficult to top 2018 financials, it is not impossible and the company could come close to them and it is not impossible to improve on them.

This article was especially interesting, as it was informative, analytical, but most importantly it provided an interactive dashboards that could be manipulated to see Disney’s financial results for the upcoming quarters. The article addressed the topic it attempted to cover very well and they even went beyond to provide the dashboard to the reader for credibility and analysis. I am interested to see if these expectations will come to life, and how Disney will perform in the upcoming year.

Citation: Team, T. (2018, November 12). A Closer Look At Disney’s Fiscal 2019. Retrieved November 12, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2018/11/12/a-closer-look-at-disneys-fiscal-2019/#53c1b1e03de2 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.