Junior Analyst

The Junior Analyst programme is a 11-week programme, hosted at Arcadia Secondary School, designed to deliver an MBA style curriculum to secondary school students. The essence of the programme is to deliver MBA modules to students aged 11+ with four learning goals:

• To understand how to interpret financial statements
• To provide an assessment of strategic directions of large corporations
• To understand the use of PE ratios in determining stock valuations
• To provide students the ability to ready stock performance charts

The programme is considered essential for students as it provides them not only with financial literacy skills but also further develops their entrepreneurial mindset that will serve them well in the long run. The entrepreneurial mindset is a set of attitudes, behaviours, and skills characterised by:

• Future Orientation
• Creativity & Innovation
• Communication & Collaboration
• Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
• Opportunity Recognition

This programme allows students the opportunity to develop in all of these areas, with the intention of preparing students for their academic and personal journey ahead.

The Junior Analyst programme was the creation of its founding teacher, Navin Valrani, Arcadia Education’s award-winning CEO, who was not only educated in the finest business schools in the world but who has also successfully led a number of companies across a variety of industries. Navin Valrani holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Wharton School of Business, an MBA from London Business School, an MS.Ed from the University of Pennsylvania and College Counselling certificate from UCLA. He is currently pursuing his doctorate degree in learning. In order to be eligible for the Level 2 program, students will need to be above the age of eleven. The Analyst programme is available for enrollment at Arcadia Secondary School hosted on Sundays.

The program follows a case study format and is discussion-based. The companies that are analyzed are

• Apple
• Google
• Amazon
• Facebook
• Coca-Cola
• Disney
• McDonald’s
• Nike
• Netflix
• Tesla

The analysis of corporations includes reviewing growth rates, studying company strategy, interpreting financial statements, assessing management teams and more. At the end of each session, students will take a call on whether we should buy the “stock” based on the analysis or not. A live trade will accordingly be executed.

Assessments are a critical part of the programme. Students receive feedback on programme tasks and activities during lessons, on assignments and on their summative project. Below is a summary of the formative and summative
assessments in the programme:

Formative Assessments

• Assessing the ability of the student to create a spreadsheet model
• Analyzing weekly updates of stock prices
• Grading identification of support and resistance levels for each stock covered
• Analyzing ability to read 10-k financial statements

Summative Assessment

In the final lesson of the programme, students have to identify a stock they propose to invest in that has NOT been covered during the programme. They are required to apply the learnings in the programme by using the following methodology:

• Understand the company strategy in line with the macroeconomic
  environment
• Identify support and resistance levels
• Look at comparable Price-Earnings (PE) ratios
• Read recent news headlines on the company

Students make a written submission that covers their proposal, after which they
present their proposal in class.