Merry Christmas.

I have a little Christmas gift to you from the Library: we've got a new resource called Osiris.  It's brought to you by the same people who supply the FAME database so the look of it won't be unfamiliar.  The major difference compared to FAME is that it covers global company information.  So now you are not limited to just looking at UK companies, you can choose a company from wherever you like!

Wishing you all a relaxing break and I'll see you in the New Year.

Would you like a little help?

Welcome to our new students and welcome back to those returning.  Now we have all settled back in to University life and recovered from the rush of Freshers' Week if you would like some help in finding information for your upcoming assignments you can either email me to make an appointment or I can be found on the new StudyHub desk every Thursday afternoon between 2-3pm.  The desk can be found down the stairs next to the International office.  There's a big sign but you can, of course, ask our helpful Customer Service Point staff where it is.  It is staffed between 12-3pm every day except Wednesday and there is no need to book an appointment, so come and see us soon.

No more wiggly mergers and takeovers.

Watch Vince Cable on the BBC site give his take on the attempted take over of UK AstraZeneca.by US Pfizer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28282979

Also on the page are links to several other short videos on the subject that might be of use, it will make a nice break from reading all the journal and newspaper articles that you've been researching anyway.  

As always don't forget to reference them if you use them in your projects: 

BBC (2014) Vince Cable: No 'wiggle room' for big business takeovers Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28282979 (Accessed 14/7/14)

The referencing guide can be found here: http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/guides/a-guide-to-referencing

Available at:

Available at:

Visualising time series data – An example with share price information

Something I have been thinking about recently is how students new to the use of financial information come to grips with visualising the information as data. Now my corporate sensibilities may come out somewhat in this post as much of my use of financial information as data was taught there but the key element is to make the information into data that can be a weapon that you use for your assignment.

Let us look at the example of the share price of a company (I have picked Papa John’s Pizza) and I can go to the investor relations page of the company and obtain this information.

Just type in the company name followed by the phrase “investor relations” and you should get a top hit of the investor relations page (which is a page where listed companies need to disclose and publish particular affairs).

 

 

Now somewhere within the investor relations page is a section that will show the share price, Company A and Company B may call the section a different thing but fundamentally we are looking for the section of the investor relations page focused on the share price.

  

For this particular company the page was called Stock Information and I was able to obtain the last share price as well as the highest and lowest share price throughout the year.

The most interesting  part is what I am going to call the time series chart at the bottom of the screen grab that tells an interesting story. Here we have the share price of the company according to set dates throughout the year. By visualising the information to data we can see that there had been a steady rise from May 2013 up to April 2014 and that has subsequently followed by a fall in the share price to the present day.

Consequently there is the temptation to look at key time periods where there has been a significant shift in the share price. However, Papa John’s International is one company amongst thousands in an interconnected stock exchange system. With this line of thought wanting to look at the comparison between Papa John’s share price and that of the stock exchange where it is listed (NASDAQ) makes sense.

I go to the Reuters website (and there are many other sources that can do similar), lookup Papa John’s and in the Charts section see a section called Comparisons where I can compare Papa John’s International with NASDAQ.

 

Now that I am comparing two related sets of information against each other the performance of Papa John’s International has essentially followed the performance of the market (a possible exception could be from April 2014-June 2014). It is after recognising, retrieving and visualising information on the connection between company and stock market can share price performance be judged.

A word of warning for those considering a similar type of visual for their assignments is to make sure they acknowledge the intellectual debt they owe. In other words, cite and reference it. The Learning Resources webpage has a referencing section under Library Guides that will prove useful but it is worth remembering that a visual like the one above will be referenced as a weblink. 

References: 

Papa John's Pizza (2014) Investor Relations Available at: http://ir.papajohns.com/ (Accessed 12 June 2014)

 Reuters (2014) Charts: Papa John's International Inc. Available at: http://uk.reuters.com/business/quotes/chart?symbol=PZZA.O (Accessed 12 June 2014)