Business Fund Investment Help?

Hi I am taking a business class and I have been given the following project. I don't know where to begin or what to invest in? How do I use symbols to do this. Im stuck after creating my portfolio. Please help.

Assume you are a fund manager with a $10 million fund, which you have to invest in equity and debt. Select your portfolio and calculate the value of your investment daily for the next three days. Explain your reasons for your choice of investments in your portfolio. Will you like to change the portfolio after three days and why? Give reasons with suitable examples. In your posting, include an explanation for how your investments performed, and, in hindsight, what you would like to do differently. You may use Yahoo Finance on the Internet for creating your portfolio.

First of all, 3 days is trading not investing. In other words, 3-day time horizon is not nearly enough to see whether you have a sound portfolio or not.

This topic is way beyond the scope of a simple discussion board so here's a few pointers.

The first step is to determine your asset mix, i.e. how much you are gonna put in equities and how much in debt (e.g. balanced funds typically have 50-50 or 60-40 mix, equity funds have from 70% up in equities, but more often in excess of 90%, the rest is usually either debt or some short-term interest bearing debt instruments such at treasury bills).

Your asset mix depends on your outlook for the stocks and bonds. If you think the stocks are going to move up, then put more in stocks and less if anything in bonds and vice versa. Alternatively, if you are not sure then stick to something like 60-40.

Once you've determined the mix, you can move further down and select specific industries and eventually stocks to invest in (a diversified portfolio should have no less than 20-40 stocks). The same principle applies to bonds, where you have to select maturities (and thus portfolio duration, i.e. sensitivity to changes in interest rates) and issuers.

The choice of industries, companies and issuers once again depends on your outlook.