Up to date Information

I resolved the issue I was facing with the online portal, and have found some useful information for my research. I am currently rapping up my research and have started to draw some conclusions to incorporate into the final presentation. I will complete this project next week with the presentation  reviewed by my advisors.

Update/Week Eight

I am meeting with my advisor this week to discuss some of the issues I am facing with the portal I've been using. I will check back once that's resolved! 

Week Seven

This week I started to look into the online portal that AXA had granted me access to. I have found a substantial amount of information that has been helpful for my research. At this point, it will take me another week to completely analyze and find specific trends for me to make a final conclusion. If I find something important, I will update another post within the week!

Week Six

This week has been pretty slow for my research. I monitored the portfolios and saw that the markets seem to be coming out of the bear rally. Oil particularly rallied, so the market subsequently took a positive turn. The DOW is finally positive for this year (YTD). I am trying to figure out how to invest into mutual funds with the market simulator I am using; for some reason I am able to invest into ETF's but not mutual funds. I am looking into that, and hope to find a solution soon.

Week Five

This week I completed my poll and finalized the 3 portfolios that will play key roles for my research in the next few months. I may poll a few more people, as it is better to have a larger group of subjects.
My next steps will be to meet with my on-site advisor and then possibly move into the online portal that my advisor had granted me access to.

Week Four

This week I completed creating the holdings for the portfolios that match the specific risk tolerances. Because many stocks, mutual funds, and ETF's are similar, I disregarded the conservative plus and moderate plus portfolios because most of those holdings were able to be added into the other three. With that said, I have three portfolio's: Conservative, Moderate, and Aggressive. 

I am almost done with my poll, and plan to complete it this week. 

Week Three

This week, I continued conducting my risk tolerance survey and started to create possible holdings to put into the 5 portfolios that match the correlating risk tolerances. (Conservative portfolio, Conservative Plus portfolio, Moderate portfolio, Moderate Plus portfolio, and Aggressive portfolio). 
I plan to be finished with the poll and the portfolios by the end of next week. 

In addition, I have been monitoring the market closely and have been tuning in to the analysts'  discussions regarding their predictions on the future of our economy. 

Week Two

New focus of Research Project: After discussing with my on-site advisor, I have altered my project to concentrate on investment plans as a whole and analyze their performances in the current volatile markets. (Stock and ETF portfolios, mutual funds, retirement funds, etc.) I will take into account risk tolerance to study investors' preference for the type of fund they'd like to allocate their money into.
With that said, I am currently conducting a poll consisting of 25-50 people in which I will measure each individual's risk tolerance. Additionally, I will create 5 investment portfolios that will characterize those preferences. (Conservative, Conservative Plus, Moderate, Moderate Plus, and Aggressive)
In the coming weeks, I will monitor the markets and analyze which investment plan is more profitable.

Week One

The first week of my project was spent doing background research on 401k's and investor psychology (risk tolerance). I studied some of the typical preferences that clients and investors consider when it comes to asset management. 401k's are typically most reliable when it comes to long term stability of investments. However, considering this year's volatile markets and the pre-recessionary sentiments existing between the general public and government, stocks have taken a severe downturn effecting both long term retirement funds and individual investment portfolios. 

For the further weeks of research I will be conducting, I will pay close attention to current markets and shifts in the economy to drive my conclusions about investment profitability and performance with both retirement funds at AXA and individual stocks and ETF's. 

Additionally, hearing from Janet Yellen at Congress and the question and answer session with government officials,  I believe that the economy and markets will remain volatile this year and the early recessionary thoughts in response to global markets and oil will become more and more prevalent and thus effect investments both long term and short term drastically. 

About Project

Today, the general tendency for the typical wage earner is to allocate a specific portion of his or her salary into long term investment plans. Specifically, 401k’s have been most reliable for long term asset security and equity growth. However, with increasing volatility in financial markets and fluctuations in world economies, maintaining a balanced portfolio of mutual funds in 401k’s becomes often arduous to handle. As a result, businesses and wage earners find themselves indecisive in choosing the best financial agency to manage their assets. In this project, I will analyze the 401k sales of AXA financial services and inquire into the possible reasons why AXA has obtained a possible preference over other competing investment firms. Major areas of my analysis will include: comparing and contrasting AXA 401k management strategies, analyzing various services and plans offered by AXA and competitors, and mutual fund diversification. By doing this, I will be able to answer two leading questions for this project: “Why are 401k sales particularly varying when it comes to investment management compared to other retirement plans?” and “What are the prime reasons that explain such differences in 401k sales?” I will conduct my research by using the online access to AXA’s 401k portal, subsequently using this data as the basis for much of my results. Online data may include actual portfolios of mutual funds, list of AXA 401k holders, and potentially different plans chosen by advisors and clients. By concentrating my studies into these categories, I will then be able gain a cohesive understanding of 401k management and investment services. 

In addition to the concentration on 401k’s, I will also study other investment platforms in comparison to retirement funds. Particularly, I will study the performances of standard portfolios of individual stocks and ETF’s and their profitability against 401k’s. As result, I will be able to analyze the more efficient investment strategy for investors and clients  alike considering today’s volatile markets.