Two students from Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, were ranked among the nation’s best student investors when Institutional Investor magazine reviewed their stock portfolios after five months of simulated trading.
More than 2,100 students from 34 U.S. colleges and universities participated in the magazine’s second All-America Student Analyst Competition. Their simulated portfolios, launched with a $100,000 virtual investment, were judged using six investment factors: net benchmark outperformance, volatility, balance sheet impact, net exposure impact, long alpha and short alpha.
Just 16 percent of the students – including two from the Sam and Irene Black School of Business at Penn State Behrend – outperformed the Russell 3000 benchmark, which gained approximately 9.3 percent during the competition.
Nicholas Henning, a senior from Erie, placed 76th in the overall competition. His sub-portfolio for the Technology, Telecommunications and Media sector earned a return of 48.2 percent – the best of all competitors.
William Elchik, a senior from Moon Township, placed 81st.
A third student – Amy Rice, a senior from North East – had one of the top-performing sub-portfolios for the energy sector.
“Penn State Behrend has some of the best finance students in the country,” said Hunter Holzhauer, assistant professor of finance. “We are very pleased with the performance of our undergraduate students, given that they were competing against highly ranked graduate and undergraduate students throughout the country.”
Students from Columbia, Cornell, Drexel, Fordham, Ohio State and Tulane universities also competed in the challenge.