Professor Elam

Sunday Jan 20 2013

It's always easy to spot the A Student. The A student arrives prepared and anticipating what will happeni in class. The assignments have been read adn outlined, Problems are attempted. The A Student goes outside the required work and researches topics on their own. For example, I just added a list of helpful websites to the Course Content under Blackboard. I have links to several commodity and stock exchanges on the site. As the intermediate classes know, we will be studying Futures and Options using a download from the CME site. How many of you will take the time to explore the CME and ICE sites. What contracts are traded?  What does the creation of a new contract tell us?  The answer is that there is now enough demand to trade sometbhing not previously traded. I noticed one exchange is introducing a rupee futures contract. This is indicative of expanding business in India. 

B Students read assignments but generally do not go beyond that. 

C Students show up, sometimes, and rarely read the assignments. Since there is little to no preparation for class they cannot follow the lectures and have not clue as to whether they understand the problems or not. 

Plan on which student you want to become now.