The unsung heroes of the holidays. 

Answer: 

Questions:

• Reviewing the chart, how much would your $100 investment five years ago have grown if you had invested in...
  • UPS?
  • FedEx?
  • The overall stock market (S&P 500)?
• Would you have been better off choosing between these 2 companies or just buying the overall stock market through an index fund?
• What research could you do to find out what factors have impacted the stock prices for FedEx and UPS? 

Here's the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the Day that you can use in your classroom.

Behind the numbers:

Investopedia does a good job of explaining the similarities and differences of these two companies:

**Want to try this at home? You can do it for any stocks!

1.   Pull historical stock information from Yahoo Finance for 5 years for each company and drop in Google sheet.
2.   Using the Adj. Close column from Yahoo Finance Historical Stock Information (which accounts for dividends), index the first day in the series to 100. How? Divide each of the adj. stock prices by that first day’s stock price. 
3.   Then arrange three columns with one being date, second being first company’s stock prices indexed to first day in the series and the third for the other company’s indexed stock prices.
4.  I added a third item to the graph which is the S&P 500 Index (SPY is the ETF) to compare how these companies did compared to the overall market. 
5.   Highlight those three fields, and Insert>Chart and voila you have the stock comparison chart you see above. 

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Looking for other company comparisons? Here's a few we have done recently: 

• Starbucks vs. Dunkin' Donuts
• Nike vs. Under Armour
• AT&T vs. Verizon
• Coke vs. Pepsi

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.