Individual investors who continually monitor the financial markets seeking mispriced securities: are overwhelmingly successful in earning abnormal profits. earn excess profits on all of their investments. make the markets increasingly more efficient. are always quite successful using only historical price information as their basis of evaluation. are never able to find a security that is temporarily mispriced.

In its 2016 annual report, caterpillar inc. reported the following (in millions): 2016 2015 sales $38,537 $47,011 cost of goods sold 28,309 33,546 as a percentage of sales, did caterpillar's gross profit increase or decrease during 2016? select one: a. gross profit increased from 26.8% to 28.6% b. gross profit decreased from 28.6% to 26.5% c. gross profit increased from 71.4% to 73.2% d. gross profit decreased from 73.2% to 71.4% e. there is not enough information to answer the question.

Burke enterprises is considering a machine costing $30 billion that will result in initial after-tax cash savings of $3.7 billion at the end of the first year, and these savings will grow at a rate of 2 percent per year for 11 years. after 11 years, the company can sell the parts for $5 billion. burke has a target debt/equity ratio of 1.2, a beta of 1.79. you estimate that the return on the market is 7.5% and t-bills are currently yielding 2.5%. burke has two issuances of bonds outstanding. the first has 200,000 bonds trading at 98% of par, with coupons of 5%, face of $1000, and maturity of 5 years. the second has 500,000 bonds trading at par, with coupons of 7.5%, face of $1000, and maturity of 12 years. kate, the ceo, usually applies an adjustment factor to the discount rate of +2 for such highly innovative projects. should the company take on the project?

As a finance manager at allsports communication, charlie worries about the firm's borrowing requirements for the upcoming year. he knows the benefit of estimating allsports' cash disbursements and short-term investment expectations. facing these concerns, a(n) would provide charlie with valuable information by providing a good estimation of whether the firm will need to do short-term borrowing. capital budget cash budget operating budget line item budget