About Us
History
The Student Investment Fund serves a dual purpose. First, it enriches student education by providing hands-on experience in financial decision-making and teaches critical aspects of investment analysis and portfolio management. Second, it instills the value of philanthropy and the importance of giving back by sharing their success. Each year, 5% of the fund’s net assets are distributed back to students in the form of scholarships.
Advisory Board Members
Dr. Eric Fricke- Professor
Dr. Scott Fung- Professor
Dr. Sinan Goktan- Professor
Mr. Mike Coke- President and CEO of Terreno Realty; donor
Mr. Ken Pereira- Retired CFO of SteelRiver Infrastructure Partners; donor
Mr. Louie Navellier- Chairman and Founder of Navellier & Associates
Investment Policy Guidelines
The Student Investment Fund invests only in US-based companies with stocks trading on US exchanges. Companies must have a minimum market capitalization of $2 billion, with a strong emphasis on large-cap firms. No position will exceed 5% of the total portfolio size at the time of purchase.
The Fund employs a bottom-up investing approach. Each student analyst is assigned a sector with hundreds of companies they must evaluate with fundamental research and analyses. Students examine numerous valuation and risk metrics within a multidimensional financial model.
Quantitative measures consider price to free cash flow to equity, price to book, firm size, financial stability (dividends and stock repurchases), enterprise value to EBITDA, efficiency (trends in margins over time), growth, and financial leverage. Each company must be scored on all these metrics to create a shortlist.
Students conduct in-depth research on firms in the shortlist. They must pour through analyst reports to consider qualitative measures such as long-term sustainable competitive advantages, stewardship of capital by management, ESG, and weighing potential risks.
Students employ a comprehensive diversification strategy grounded in portfolio theory to target the same level of risk (volatility) as our benchmark – the S&P500. Students inspect stock correlations, underlying business models, and industry classifications to assess the fit of a recommendation to current positions.
Based on the analyses, students write analyst reports and pitch recommendations to an Advisory Board for approval. The Board must approve of recommendations with a majority vote (50% + 1).