Fresno State students from the Student-Managed Investment Fund Club scored high at the 2023 Global Portfolio Competition, held in New York City on March 30 and 31. The students won first place and a $750 prize in the undergraduate value category and third place and a $500 prize in the undergraduate core category.
The club includes students in Fresno State’s Finance 129 class who manage over $6 million in endowment funds for the Fresno State Foundation under the oversight of Dr. K.C. Chen of the Department of Finance and Business Law.
This marks the sixth and seventh times in 11 years that Craig School of Business students have placed in the top three at the competition.
Ten students attended the competition, which was part of the annual Global Asset Management Education Forum presented by Quinnipiac University. The Global Portfolio Competition compares the performance over the past year of student-managed investment portfolios from teams among the 120 colleges and universities represented at the forum.
According to Quinnipiac University, the forum is the world’s largest student-run financial conference, drawing over 1,300 students from universities in the United States, Canada and Lebanon — including institutions such as Yale University, the University of Miami, Purdue University and Providence College.
“This is a huge accomplishment. It was the first time that Fresno State has won in two categories,” said Fresno State student Manuela Mendolicchio. “For me, this was particularly meaningful, especially given the common misperception that a school like ours cannot compete against larger institutions.”
The students competed with two separate investment funds in categories defined by their investment strategies. The Craig School fund is an all-cap value fund, which means that the fund uses the value investing strategy to pick stocks, whether small- or large-cap, that appear to be trading for less than their intrinsic value.
The Fresno State fund is a large-cap core fund, which means the fund buys only large-cap value and growth stocks and has no intentional style bias. (“Large-cap” refers to the companies with a market capitalization of $10 billion or more.)
Stock trades for both funds are proposed by students in and are approved and executed by the course instructor. While the funds are managed by students, the funds are owned by the California State University, Fresno Foundation.
The Student-Managed Investment Fund program began in the 1998-99 academic year and the student-managed funds have steadily risen in value. Currently, the value of the Craig School fund is approximately $750,000 and the value of the Fresno State fund is approximately $5.7 million.
