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[Project] The Mormon Church's Stock Portfolio #287

Open angelareplica opened 5 years ago

angelareplica commented 5 years ago

Pitch

Summary

To remain in good standing with the LDS church, Mormons are expected to tithe 10% of their salaries. Where does that money go? The LDS church is also notoriously secretive about their finances, but they recently revealed that they invest a portion of their money in the stock market. Mormonleaks, a whistleblowing organization, compiled data from SEC filings made by 13 LLCs that they believe are linked to the LDS church. (They've promised me more detailed information on how they've arrived at their conclusions.) I'd like to look at what kinds of companies the LDS church is investing in.

Details

Possible headline(s): The LDS Church is Sitting on a Stock Portfolio Worth $32.8 billion

Data set(s): https://github.com/angelareplica/data-studio/tree/master/code/06-lds-stocks

Code repository: https://github.com/angelareplica/data-studio/tree/master/code/06-lds-stocks

Possible problems/fears/questions: The data are a bit limited. I'd like to bring in some outside data to give me a better picture - and to be able to categorize all 1600+ companies by industry.

Work so far

Created dataframes for each tab and concatenated them. Rough drafts of some charts:

screen shot 2018-08-13 at 10 46 30 pm

The most popular companies the LLCs invested in: lds_most_common_stocks

lds_top_stock_holdings

Checklist

angelareplica commented 5 years ago

Update #1. Just did Illustrator work here; no new analysis or datasets.

Update

Your project content: images/words/etc

overall_value_pie_edited2

top10holdings_edited

most_common_edited

Any changes in direction or topic?

Nope.

Problems/Questions

Planning to regex the ticker symbols and hoping to merge the dataframe to match a list of NASDAQ and NYSE companies/industries.

Checklist

angelareplica commented 5 years ago

Update #2. I only have one additional chart to add here, because I spent wayyy too much time merging in NASDAQ and NYSE data, and then trying to find interesting patterns in industry/sector. I didn't really find anything interesting.

Update

Your project content: images/words/etc

stacked_industry_chaos_edited2

Any changes in direction or topic?

No changes in direction.

Problems/Questions

As I mentioned above, I merged in industry and sector data from NASDAQ and the NYSE. I was hoping to find interesting things, but the LDS Church's stock portfolio just seems really diversified and boring. They have investments in some eyebrow-raising companies, like Equifax and Monsanto, but the values are relatively small. I didn't find any overt liquor, tobacco, or caffeinated beverage companies -- in line with Mormon values.

I also hate my color palette and want to re-design all my charts. Additionally, the stacked bar chart isn't terribly useful right now because there are hundreds of industries contained within the sectors.

Checklist

sarahslo commented 5 years ago

so the colors in the bar charts are unneeded. they have no meaning and are confusing - the chart colors don't relate to each other but you want to see if they do. use 1 color unless you need to add meaning and want to point something else.

for instance, did you notice that the of the top holdings that there is one weird company called mednax? do you know what it does?

MEDNAX, Inc. is an American company founded in 1979 and is headquartered in Sunrise, Florida. The company focuses on neonatal, anesthesia, maternal-fetal and pediatric physician subspecialty services in all 50 states and Puerto Rico

weird right? and coincidentally yesterday a class action suit was filed against them for alleged securities fraud. that is news behind the data. the fact that murdoch owns newscorp is not news, so when you add annotation be conscious of really give us extra extra info.

i wish i had a key for the sector chart! i suspect there are stories in there if you pull the data apart further and organize it...heroic effort.

(the arrow in the last chart shud point AT the data, not the label.)

angelareplica commented 5 years ago

Final

Project visuals/text

overall_value_pie_edited2_light most_common_edited_2_notitle top10holdings_edited_2 stacked_industry_chaos_edited2b

Working on these for the top sectors invested in : stacked_industry_chaos_health_edited

Details

Headline:
The LDS Church is Sitting on a Stock Portfolio Worth $32.8 billion

Published website version: https://angelareplica.github.io/ds-lds-stocks/

Code repository: https://github.com/angelareplica/data-studio/tree/master/code/06-lds-stocks

Final data set(s): https://github.com/angelareplica/data-studio/tree/master/code/06-lds-stocks

What did you find to be the most difficult part of this project?

Probing the data -- there's so much to look into -- and determining what's worth investigating.

Are you satisfied with what you produced? Is there anything you would like to change or improve?

I'm satisfied, but it's not complete. I'm still going through each industry and pulling things apart, per Sarah's [very helpful] suggestions above.

Checklist