British Financial Markets

Go to the websites found in Chapter 3 to assess updated economic information about British financial markets. Websites that were listed in chapter are – oanda.com, everbank.com (Individuals can open an FDIC-insured CD account in a foreign currency.), xe.com (Allows individuals to buy and sell currencies.), bloomberg.com (Cross exchange rates for several currencies.), wall-street.com/foreign (Provides links to many stock markets.), finance.yahoo.com (Access to various domestic and International financial markets and market news. Question 1: What is the current interest rate on a 1-year, risk-free government bond in the UK? Has the interest rate increased or decreased in recent years (find data for at least the last three years)? How might the current interest rate environment in the UK affect your business? ** Go to a source such as www.investing.c (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.om and find the CURRENT benchmark rate for the British (use the one-year UK government bond rate rate) and compare that to our CURRENT one-year U.S. Treasury Bill rate: Make sure you are comparing “like” (1-year) rates for the two countries. Question 2: The stock market is sometimes used as an indicator of expected business conditions in the UK, which could affect the number of students who can afford a college education in the U. S. Inspect the trend in the performance of the British stock index (see recent performance of the London Stock Exchange) over the past several years. Based on recent stock market trends, is the outlook favorable or unfavorable for your business? Explain how and why this information is/might be relevant to your business. Chapter 4: Your business is exposed to potential movements in the exchange rate of the British currency (called the “Pound”, but usually abbreviated as “GBP”), as is explained in several of the following websites: www.oanda.com (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. www.finance.yahoo.com (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. www.bloomberg.com (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. Go to one of the websites to obtain exchange rate information and assess recent exchange rate movements of the GBP with respect to the U.S. Dollar (USD): Question 3: How has the exchange rate (GBP/USD) of the British currency change over the last year? It is helpful here to examine trends over the past1 year, 2 years, and 3 years. Yahoo Finance has the ability to create excellent graphs for any past period. Please feel free to include any that you create from there and include them in your response.