4FNCE004W Introduction to Financial Markets Assignment 2025-26 | University of Westminster

4FNCE004W Introduction to Financial Markets 

The assignment is a follow-up to the first assessment. This is an individual report. The length of the essay is 2,000 words(+/- 10%) excluding cover page, references, and appendices.

Required:

Conduct a case study on how financial technology (fintech) has impacted themanufacturing industry. Compare and contrast a manufacturing company that has implemented fintech against a ‘traditional’ manufacturing company. Your case study needs to include the following elements:

a. [10 pts]Collect daily data for both public companies: The adjusted closing share prices from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021. You can use the ‘SFA Alternative Sources of Data’ Excel file provided on Blackboard to find a list of databases where you can extract the required data, or any of the databases that we discussed in the week 1 ‘treasury hunt’ exercise. The data are not restricted to only the UK, as you can choose any countryprovided that you have the same number of observations for all your datasets (i.e., ensure that the number of rows in your datasets is the same). Show these excel data in the appendix of your work.

b. [15 pts]Present these two sets of price data (of both companies) in separate diagrams (using Excel) in your essay. Use ‘the appropriate graph’ in terms of how to present the dataset.

c. [25 pts]Perform correlation analysis (Pearson) between the two companies’ data.

• You can use Excel to calculate correlations between the daily returns of the two companies. Note that correlation is not a plot but just a number between -1 and 1. Make sure you only use the adjusted closing price (or ‘equivalent’, depending on the data source).

d.[20 pts]Compare and analyse the two mentioned trends. Plot two trends in the same graph (you can use Excel for this).

• Plot these trends on your own in Excel.

e.[10 pts]From your observation, argue whether there is a relationship between the two trends.

f.[10 pts]Explain possible reasons for the behaviour of the trends and the relationship between the two datasets, with your critical opinions and the support of at least one academic journal article.