AP economics: expected return?

I'm supposed to fill in a table with expected return of certain stocks / mutual funds I picked for a hypothetical scenario project. how do I calculate/ get expected return?
I don't really want to have to calculate each of the expected returns.... that would take too long.
I thought I could just look online and find this information easily, but it turns out that I can't... I don't think.
HELP!

Also: how would an increase/decrease in interest rates, a recession, a rapid inflation, and depreciation of the US dollar affect my stock / mutual fund investments

anyway: how does the s&p 500 illustrate the market return? where do i look, if i go to yahoo finance and look it up? i don't know what to look at
i no longer have any mutual funds in my list... i changed them b/c it was getting complicated.
here is my list:
NAT
AAPL
FRO
VLCCF

This is actually a fairly basic exercise, and you really do need to calculate the returns yourself. If your goal is to pass the AP exam you need to learn how to do this, why take AP economics if you don't want to do the work?

In most cases CAPM is used to calculate expected return. The formula is:
Required (or expected) Return = Risk Free Rate + (Market Return - Risk Free Rate)*Beta

The market return is based on what the mutual fund's benchmark is, for a stock the S&P 500 is traditionally used to illustrate the market return. The beta is a standard calculation you can find easily on the mutual fund's fact sheet, and yahoo finance provides the beta for stocks, just put in the ticker. The risk free rate is traditionally the yield on a 3-month treasury bill, the current rate is 0.34%. You have to do your own math, there is no other way to do it and get accurate answers.

As far as the second 1/2 of your question goes, it depends entirely on what you are invested in.

The S&P 500 is the market. So its return would be the market return. The S&P 500 ticker is ^GSPC, it is available on yahoo finance. Report It

I have not used it but it seems as though the free trial version for this (http://www.rwent.com/download.html) might be what you are looking for. You could also use a spread sheet and figure out the return based on compound interest. Enter a value in one cell and in the next cell, take the previous and multiply it by the percentage you are projecting (ie, 8% = .08). Do this a few times and you will get a general return rate from any initial value. Here is another quick one: http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/pop...

Your last question is a really huge one that many, many people are researching to find out. In general terms, the Fed is responsible for changing the prime interest rate and that basically affects the amount of money it costs for other banks to borrow money. As the interest gets lower and lower, the more money they are trying to make available to the most amount of banks. Their goal as of late is to stave off a recession by pumping money out there. Same with Bush's economic stimulus package. People are slowing down their buying which, in this country, is not good for the economy. Rapid inflation will make things cost more and will compare less and less in value with respect to other countries. Mutual funds are so long term that while the dollar value will go up and down, there isn't much affect over the long term on your mutual funds. A weaker dollar will affect the amount of business the US gets which in turn affects the economy as a whole.