Given the following data on bond yields:

This Year Last Year
Yield on top-rated corporate bonds 9.3% 9.8%
Yield on intermediate-grade corporate bonds 11.8 11.3

a. Calculate the confidence index this year and last year. (Round your answers to 4 decimal places.)

Confidence Index
This Year
Last Year

b. Is the confidence index increasing or decreasing?

Increasing
Decreasing

Aquatic marine stores company manufactures special metallic materials and decorative fittings for luxury yachts that require highly skilled labor. aquatic uses standard costs to prepare its flexible budget. for the first quarter of the year, direct materials and direct labor standards for one of their popular products were as follows: direct materials: 3 pounds per unit; $ 6 per pound direct labor: 4 hours per unit; $ 19 per hour during the first quarter, aquatic produced 5 comma 000 units of this product. actual direct materials and direct labor costs were $ 65 comma 000 and $ 330 comma 000, respectively. for the purpose of preparing the flexible budget, calculate the total standard direct materials cost at a production volume of 5 comma 000 units.

Sye chase started and operated a small family architectural firm in 2016. the firm was affected by two events: (1) chase provided $25,000 of services on account, and (2) he purchased $2,800 of supplies on account. there were $250 of supplies on hand as of december 31, 2016. record the two transactions in the accounts. record the required year-end adjusting entry to reflect the use of supplies and the required closing entries. post the entries in the t-accounts and prepare a post-closing trial balance.

Companies hd and ld are both profitable, and they have the same total assets (ta), total invested capital, sales (s), return on assets (roa), and profit margin (pm). both firms finance using only debt and common equity. however, company hd has the higher total debt to total capital ratio. which of the following statements is correct? a) company hd has a higher assets turnover than company ld. b) company hd has a higher return on equity than company ld. c) none of the other statements are correct because the information provided on the question is not enough. d) company hd has lower total assets turnover than company ld. e) company hd has a lower operating income (ebit) than company ld