THE INVESTING GAME
ECON 205a
S. Pecksok

Written by:
Mathieu Dubuc

May 19th, 2010
Middlebury College

During the Spring 2010, the students in Economics of Investment played the investing game throughout the 10-week semester. The 42 players were each given $500,000 and had to manage a Buy and Hold account as well as an Active account. Students invested in domestic stocks, foreign stocks, bonds, mutual funds, futures, and options, attempting to finish with the best portfolio in the class by the end of the trading period.

Section 1: Introducing the stock

General Information on the Stock
Stock: Kraft Food (KFT) New York Stock Exchange
Purchase price: $29.05
52 week hi and low: 23.55 - 31.09
Market capitalization: 44.23B
Mean analyst Recommendation: 2.1/5
Annual Dividend and yield: 3.90%
One-year target price: $33.53
Short interest ratio: 2.2
% shares held by institutions: 42.20 %
% shares held by insiders: 8.02%
Beta : 0.59
Company Profile Kraft Food (KFT) is a company that manufactures and markets snacks, confectionery, and quick meal products worldwide in approximately 160 countries. Together with its subsidiaries Kraft also sells beverages, cheese, convenient meals and various packaged grocery products. Nine of their brands have revenues of more than $1 billion, and 50 brands generating more $100 million. Brands like Kraft cheeses, dinners and dressings; Oscar Mayer meats; Philadelphia cream cheese; Maxwell House coffee; Nabisco cookies and crackers and it's Oreo brand; Jacobs coffees; Milka chocolates; and LU biscuits. They have more than 103,000 diverse employees around the world, which contributes to the success of their business. The corporation is a mature company that has been in an uptrend since the beginning of the financial recession experienced in 2009 (figure 1). On January 19th 2010, Kraft Food acquired Cadbury (PLC), the world's largest maker of chocolate and sweets after a month-long corporate battle, for $19.5