Description
Marketable securities offer investors the opportunity to develop a profitable portfolio. A marketable security is a debt or equity instrument that possesses significant liquidity in the sense that it can easily be resold in the securities market (Investopedia). The key to any profitable investment lies in making the right choices during investment selection. As a potential investor, my choice is the publicly traded stock of 3M Company. Not only has this stock shown successively increasing price performance over the past three years, but it has maintained relatively higher earnings per share compared to its close competitors.
3M Company maintains a global presence as a diversified technology company operating within the industrial goods sector of the diversified machinery industry (YAHOO Finance, 2015). According to trading figures from the New York Stock Exchange, this company has consistently exhibited growth in market stock price with the latest valuation being 156 US Dollars per share as of 22nd October 2015 (The Wall Street Journal, 2015). A look at the company’s stock price over the past 5 years shows a pattern of steady increase. From USD 87.93 in 2011, the price took a slight dip in 2012, closing in at USD 85.13 (3M Company). This slip in market price was reversed in 2013 when the stock averaged at USD 97.96, from which point it took a remarkable upward trend clocking USD 134.80 in 2014 (3M Company). It is important to note that this pattern has been maintained throughout this year.
In terms of market index performance, the S & P 500 Index, of which 3M Company stock forms a component, has shown a more or less comparable performance over the five-year period under review. As of December 2011, the index stood at 1257.64 (Bloomberg Business). A slight drop of 0.04 was observed in the following year. 2013 saw the index rise to 1402.43, which figure rose further to 1831.37 in January of 2014 (Bloomberg Business). This trend has endured, with the current figure standing at 2052.51.