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Abstract:
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Selected applications of basic time series tools and techniques, coupled with some other tools and devices are used to explore profitability in U.S. corporations over a period of 62 years (1955 - 2016). Many technological advances have come about that permit levels of depth and appraisal not easily available during the time-period in which the data considered here were accruing. Our objective in this work is to examine profitability data about a collection of firms widely known as the 'Fortune 500'. The primary tools we employ in this work include numerical and graphical descriptions, comparisons devices, predictions techniques, correlation analysis methods, simple forecasting and smoothing tools, and occasional ARIMA techniques. The main focus of our effort in this work is to arrive at explanation(s) as to why certain types of firms, in certain types of industry categories maintain exalted levels of profitability, far above most others and virtually never 'see red'. A natural consequence of our primary focus is that we can only (MUST!) concern ourselves with the tools and techniques stated above in order to extract 'nuggets of insight' embedded in the data.
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