16:332:568            Software Engineering of Web Applications

Homework Assignment #1:   Technical Analysis os Stock Prices

Read Section 1.3.2 Case Study 2: Personal Investment Assistant in the course lecture notes. Also visit these websites:

• Technical Analysis
• Fundamental Analysis

Visit Yahoo! Finance to examine basic technical analysis for different stocks (under the menu INVESTING, select the option Market Stats). For example, see here the basic indicators for Bank of America, ticker symbol BAC.

• Trend lines and channels (explain how to draw a trend line and what defines a channel)
• Support and resistance (define and show examples)
• Major trend reversals (define and show examples)
• Head-and-shoulders pattern; flags; pennants; triangles (define and show examples)

Write an essay describing some of these (or other) patterns and indicators. (I hope that different students will select different patterns, but this is not required.) When describing the patterns, discuss the trading volume associated with the pattern, not only the stock prices. For each pattern, state the time scale over which the pattern is applicable (e.g., minutes, days, months, years), or is the pattern scale-independent (i.e., can be applied over any time scale)?

Every student should submit an individual essay. The essay should have a cover page containing the student's name, the essay title, the course name, and the submission date. References should be listed at the end to credit the sources (books, articles, URLs, etc.). The essay can be up to 5 pages long, and should be emailed as a PDF document by the due date, no later than 3:00 PM.

It is acceptable to use copyrighted images or diagrams from websites in your essay as long as you properly acknowledge the source and give the exact URL where you found those images or diagrams. Please include the entire URL, not just the company website. For example if you use a diagram from this website, then cite the full URL as:
    http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/financial-planning/online-trading.htm
rather than only:
    http://money.howstuffworks.com

When submitting your homework assignments, please use only the following file formats:

• If submitting multiple files, please collect all files in one and submit using the ZIP or gzip compression software. (Please do not use the RAR file format.)
• If submitting a short how-to-run-a-program description (known as README document), please submit a plain text file (file extension .txt).
• If submitting a design document with text and graphics, please submit an PDF file. (Please do not send Word files or any other word-processing format—only PDF!)
  Here is a PDF writer you can use in MS Windows. Apple Macs automatically convert postscript to PDF by clicking on the file icon. There are UNIX utilities that convert postscript to PDF for Linux users; make sure you include all fonts in the created PDF.
• If submitting a program, please submit the source code in the language you programmed, such as Java, C++, etc. (Please do not send executable files.)

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