This activity focuses on ethical investment.

Ethical Investments Activity

As a class you are going to produce a booklet with a working title 'Guide to Ethical Investments'. The booklet is intended to advise potential shareholders as to 'best ethical buys' in a number of different sectors. Each of you will be required to undertake an in-depth investigation of a particular sector of the UK stock market. You will need to build up a file on the main plcs in your sector. You might wish to obtain the following:

1. Copies of relevant annual reports
2. Information about ethical investing
3. FTSE share information contained in the financial pages of the broadsheets
4. Copies of the FT
5. As much other recent comment on the relevant companies from the media including newspaper coverage, data on CD ROMs, TV programmes, and internet sites such as The Motley Fool
   (http://www.fool.com) and E*Trade
   (https://uk.etrade.com)
6. An understanding of how the external business environment (use PEST) is likely to affect companies in your sector
7. The use of accounting ratios to assess the performance of individual companies.

In short you will become an expert on a particular sector of the UK stock market. The first half of the term will be devoted to building up your file and in the second half you will be required to produce a two page summary of how you feel companies in your sector are likely to perform next year. You will be required to recommend which, if any shares, should be bought by an ethical investor.

At the end of the term you will each be given a fictional £1,000 to invest in shares of your choice. In one years time there will be two prizes - one for the portfolio with the largest capital gain and one for the portfolio with the largest income.

You will use your expertise to contribute one to two pages of text about your sector for the booklet. You may wish to consider publication and sales.

Activities to help you achieve this task:

1. What do you know about plcs? How do you know if they are going to be successful?
2. Using media coverage - understanding share prices and the financial pages
3. What is ethical investing?
4. The importance of the external environment
5. Ratio analysis