Financial Markets and Institutions, - Essay Example

The function of the US financial market is to insert the household savings into the circular flow in the form of investment, so as to enhance the income level of the country (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, 2012). Apple Inc. was instituted in the year 1977 and is headquartered in California, United States of America. Apple Inc. is a constituent of the S&P 500 Index and it trades under the symbol AAPL. The earnings per share of Apple for the year 2012 were $44.64, while it was only $28.05 in 2011.

This increase in EPS was due to the 61% rise in the net income of Apple in the year 2012 as compared to that of 2011. The graph below illustrates the evaluation of the five year total shareholder return of Apple as against the S&P 500 Composite Index, the Dow Jones U.S. Technology Index and the S&P Computer Hardware Index (Apple Inc, 2012). In the figure, it has been assumed that in September 2007, $100 was invested in each of the index including Apple (Apple Inc, 2012). It can be observed from the graph that the total shareholder returns of Apple Inc.

had been consistently higher that of the other Indexes considered. Vodafone is a global telecommunication company, operating in above 30 nations across the world and with more than 404 million customers (Vodafone, 2012). It has been extremely cash generative during the historical period and has incessantly returned its market capitalization to its shareholders through dividend payments and share buybacks. The following figure represents the share price movements of Vodafone from April 2011 to May 2012, against that of the FTSE: It can be observed that Vodafone had performed relatively better than the FTSE stock in terms of share price movements.

Additionally, the company had been continuously giving out dividends to its shareholders since the last four years. France Telecom-Orange is one of the major telecommunication companies in the