|
|
Expectations and Stock Prices: It seems strange that a company reports that
it had a profitable year and then its stock price declines. But, this does happen. And it happens because stock prices are based on people’s expectations about
a company. So even if a company has profits, their stock price may go down if
the profits were lower than expected. In other words, investors thought the company was going to have even greater profits and so they paid too much for the stock. To put it another way, changes are not as important as unexpected changes in controlling stock prices.
|
|
Here are some expressions that we use to talk about expectations. Complete the sentences below using one of the following expressions. Try to use them all:
|
|
higher
lower |
than expected
than anticipated
than forecast
than predicted |
|
Stock prices will rise when profits . . . |
are higher than excepted |
|
Stock prices will drop when costs . . . |
|
|
Stock prices will go up when sales . . . |
|
|
Stock prices will climb when revenue . . . |
|
|
Stock prices will plummet when interest rates . . . |
|
|
Stock prices will decrease when taxes . . . |
|
|
Stock prices will increase when labor costs . . . |
|
|
Stock prices will fall when legal expenses . . . |
|
|
Stock prices will crash when losses . . . |
|
|
Stock prices will decline when competition . . . |
|
|
Stock prices will rise when consumer demand . . . |
|
Vocabulary Warm-up:
As a warm-up, the teacher can go over the vocabulary sheets listed above or have the students do them for homework before class. One activity I do on the board and then orally is as follows: I write a few sentence about what I thought on the board. For example,
I thought profits would be about 15 million dollars.
I thought fuel costs would be about 1.4 million dollars.
In reality, profits were 8 million dollars.
In reality, fuel costs were 2.2 million dollars.
Then ask the students to compare reality with my expectations. I usually do the first few for them so that they can see where I'm heading with it.
Profits were lower than expected.
Fuel costs were higher than anticipated.
After we've done a few on the board, I try to do some orally to give them some practice listening to big numbers. I also do the same routine with ahead of schedule and behind schedule.
Class Activity:
Each student is given a corporate role card that contains some good news and some bad news that the boss has given the student. (The boss has just returned from an overseas trip). The student will have to relay this news to other coworkers. In turn the coworkers will relay news about other overseas factories. Everybody will take notes and fill out the table on the activity sheet.
| 
