So as I explained last time, each team has different costs for the four different markets, so each team will have their own unique advantages and disadvantages. So each time has to decide which market that they want to enter, and how much capacity, or capital, they want to purchase, which is used to produce the product. Each product in the market also has a marginal cost for each unit of the product that is produced.

There are eight different teams, and only four different markets, so its almost inevitable that more than one team will enter the same market. What happens in that case? This is where the real challenge of the game starts, because you have to try to predict 1) what market the other teams will enter 2) how much capacity they will purchase for that market and 3) what price they will charge for the product.

I will wrap up talking about this game next time!

I want to talk a little about a project that I am working on in one of my classes. For my econ class, Game Theory and Strategy, we have formed teams and are competing in a "Competitive Strategy Game." This game allows us to use skills that we have learned in this class, as long as what we have learned in previous economics classes, in a simulation type experience.

There are 4 different potential markets that each team can enter, each with different entry costs, unit capacity costs, and marginal costs. Each team has different costs for each of these markets, so no two teams have identical costs to enter and produce in a market. This means that it could be advantageous for one team to enter market 1, while another team has higher costs and doesn't really want to enter that market.

I will explain a little more about the game next time!

So at the end of the semester, we formed groups and did a bank analysis project. This consisted of picking 4-5 banks around the country and write a paper analysis, and then present our findings to the rest of the class. So the banks that we chose were Gate City Bank (naturally), Ramsey Bank, Bell State Bank & Trust, and First International Bank & Trust.

We did a bunch of research to find a large number of different ratios and percentages on all of the banks. We did 3-4 ratio/percentage for different "health" categories, such as Asset Quality, Capital Adequacy, Liquidity, and Earnings Quality. We then compared how the banks were doing to each other, and we also compared them to the national average to see how healthy overall they are doing. We then wrote a lengthy paper summarizing our findings, and created a presentation to give to the class. It was a pretty fun experience and really taught me a lot about banks.

Management of Financial Institutions, as a class, is essentially exactly what it sounds like it would be. The meat of what we learned had to deal with the differences between different kinds of financial institutions, namely banks, credit unions, insurance agencies, and finance companies. We learned how each one runs; how they make money, how they are managed, and how to tell if they are healthy as an institution.

In addition to that, we learned about the different regulatory bodies that regulate each type of institution. As I mentioned last time, the FDIC is the regulatory body that regulates banks. Others include the National Credit Union Association, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, and individual state agencies that regulate insurance companies.

Next time I will talk about the big bank project that we did for this class!

So I was again going through CareerLink and looking at the available internships, and found another that I have a lot of interest in. It is a risk management internship with the FDIC. The FDIC, or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, is the governmental regulation branch of the banking industry around the country. It is there job to make sure that all banks that they insure are meeting at least the minimum standards for things such as deposit ratios and loan ratios.

Anyway, one of the classes that I took last year, Management of Financial Institutions, focused very heavily on the roll that the FDIC plays in the banking industry, and we learned many of the different "health" ratios and indicators that they use to determine whether or not a bank is in good condition. So after learning all of this, all the while working in a bank, the FDIC sounded like a pretty cool place to work. So finding this internship possibility made me extremely happy, and I think that I have a decent chance of getting it with my experience.

Since I am on the topic, next time I will talk a little more about my Management of Financial Institutions class that I took and what I learned.

So continuing with talking about some of the potential downsides of the TPP, another criticism is that tariffs that countries have exist to protect local industry from being over run by outside countries that are able to sell the same product for less. If taken away by the TPP, many local industries would no longer remain profitable and would have to shut down, leaving that country as a whole worse off in that regard.

One part of the TPP deal that has been leaked to the public is information the deal's intellectual property laws. These laws are generally much stricter than what most countries currently have in place, one of the influences of many corporations having their hand in the negotiations. These stricter laws give them the ability to potentially abuse or harass individuals that are "infringing" on their intellectual property rights. In addition, it is speculated that these laws will be applied to drugs to prevent cheaper medication from becoming readily available.

Lastly, the TPP gives companies the right to sue countries that have laws in place that affect them through the use of the tribunal that will be set in place. Doing this, companies can attempt to get rid of laws that, for example, restrict advertising tobacco products and cigarettes to young children.

All in all, the TPP is an extremely diverse agreement covering many topics, and really no one can say for sure if it will turn out good or bad. The deal has to be voted on and approved in each countries government before it actually takes effect.

Alright so what are some potential downsides to the TPP? Some of the initial concern regarding the agreement is the amount of secrecy that it was negotiated in. While a large majority of the population had no details regarding any of the agreement, many large corporations did have a hand in the negotiations. This is concerning because that means that a lot of the deal is negotiated is aimed at least somewhat towards providing those companies with some sort of benefit.

Another flaw that critics point to is that what the TPP proposes as "free trade" has essentially already happened because of the rapid globalization over the last few decades. Instead, some think that this is a ploy to enable large corporations to move jobs to lower wage earning countries and thus pay less for the same labor they would have to pay somewhere else. Additionally, it is believed that these same corporations would like to set those standards, the same ones I talked about last time, lower than what they currently are. This would allow them to spend less money having to follow rules and regulations.

There are still more downsides or negatives that I will continue talking about next time.

First I will talk about some of the potential gains that could be made by the participating nations of the TPP. As I had said before, a big thing that a deal like the TPP aims to do is to identify which tariffs that each country has that most affects market access and competition. Once these have been identified, a lot of negotiation between the countries happens to either get these tariffs reduced or removed altogether, thereby promoting a higher level of free trade and more products/services available to citizens.

 Another goal of the TPP is to create a rules standard for the participating countries that will affect much more than just tariffs and trade. These rules aim to standardize business practices and protect intellectual property rights, patents, and labor regulations, among other things. The hope is that with standardization across the board, labor and environmental laws of countries that have been lagging behind will catch up with the rest of the group. To ensure that the participating countries are following the rules and guidelines, the deal will set up a tribunal of sorts to enforce rules and pass down decisions.

Next time I will talk about some of the potential downsides of this deal.

This week I want to talk a little about the TPP, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If you haven't heard of it, its goal is similar to that of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The stated goal of the TPP is to help promote free trade between the participating countries by reducing tariffs and other trade restrictions and laws. The countries involved in the TPP are the US, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, New Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.

Unsurprisingly, there are people who think that this is a good thing, and there are people who think that this is a bad thing. This deal is one of the Obama Administration's biggest goals, and it has been in negotiations for over five years. They believe that if this deal does not get closed, that the US will lose a lot of its grasp in the Asia Pacific, and that China will be able to gain more influence. If that happened, American businesses would find it increasingly difficult to operate in the region, thereby harming our economy.

In the next couple of posts I will go into more detail as to what exactly some of the issues and benefits of the deal are.

The finance course that I am taking this semester is called Options, Futures, and other Derivatives. The goal of the class is to gain an understanding of how these types of derivatives work, how they hold value, and situations in which it is good or bad to hold these types of derivatives. So far we have learned the basics of both buying and selling options and futures. We have learned how they gain and lose value in relation to the price of the stock, and when it might be a good idea to purchase or sell these investment instruments to help hedge your portfolio against potential risk.

A lot of the stuff that we have covered over the first month or so of class was super basic, and for the most part was stuff that I already knew. Even still, it was nice to get a refresher, and over the last week or so we have started moving into more advanced stuff, which is nice. I am excited to learn more about the different possibilities with these types of investments over the semester, and potentially even utilize some of them with my own money.