UML Investors Come Out on Top

Management Department Chairman Stuart Freedman, College of Management Dean Kathryn Carter and Asst. Prof. Ravi Jain and the student fund managers are shown at the recent celebration of UMass Lowell's win in the Student Managed Fund competition.

In January, the UMass Foundation gave student groups at the University’s Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth and Lowell campuses $25,000 to invest with the idea of giving them real-world experience while raising money for scholarships. The stakes were raised by making it a competition between the groups.

Since then, 10 students from UMass Lowell’s College of Management have taken on not only their counterparts at the other campuses, but a volatile stock market, rapidly shifting corporate landscape and a challenging economy.

Armed with their own research, the guidance of faculty and staff and expertise available from alumni who are real-life money managers, the UMass Lowell Student Managed Fund defied the odds. As of the end of the semester, the fund was up more than 8 percent, while the S&P 500, a major stock index was down 4 percent. The UMass Lowell students beat the S&P by more than 12 percent – and, the group learned, they also beat the competition.

“While our students did pick winning stocks over this time period, the more important thing for me is that they adopted the right attitude toward stock investing. The core idea is that a stock represents ownership in a business, and a quality business bought at a fair price will do well over the long term,” said Asst. Prof. Ravi Jain, the faculty director of the fund.

The UMass Lowell student team consisted of David Ball, Minhai He, Evan Huff, Jared Jordan, Michael Krieger, Brian Lesniak, Eleni Liakakis, Mike McCarthy, Amy Osgood, Jessica Silva and Scott Wilson.

The students’ winning investments were made in a variety of sectors, including aerospace, health care, transportation and consumer goods. They recently held an informal celebration of their victory that included presenting Jain with an appreciation gift.

The program will continue in the fall, becoming a course in the College of Management. The group was given three options by the UMass Foundation for the Student Managed Fund until then: liquidate their investments and maintain a cash position; liquidate their investments and put them into an exchange traded fund (ETF), which tracks a stock index but can be traded like a stock; or maintain positions with stop-loss orders to sell any stocks that drop below the current market price. Jain said the student group decided to go with the third option.
 
The alums working with the UMass Lowell students are prominent Boston money managers, Warren Isabelle ’78, principal of Ironwood Investment Management LLC, and John Kattar ’82, managing director of investments for Eastern Investment Advisors. Frank Andrews, director of undergraduate programs for the College of Management, and Steven Rogers, a major gifts officer with University Advancement, also provided assistance to the students.