UConn Beat 100 Colleges in Quinnipiac G.A.M.E. Challenge

The UConn Student Managed Fund Graduate Team won first-place in a highly competitive Student-Managed Portfolio Competition, besting some 100 colleges from all over the world.

The Quinnipac G.A.M.E.—Global Asset Management Education—VII Forum was held at the Midtown Hilton in New York City on March 31. It was open to all student teams that have managed a portfolio during the 2016 calendar year.

At the time of the competition, the UConn team had had an overall gain of $196,000, or 9.75 percent, on its portfolio.

Team members included: Jeremy Hite; Azmath Rahiman; Priyanka Raja; Pei-ju Lee; Wei Wang; Vikram Kaimal, Vishal Page, Yuqi Han and Tao Feng. All are MBA students except Han and Feng, who are studying financial risk management. Hite and Wang are the co-leaders of the fund.

Each college investment team submitted a report on their portfolio that included holdings, purchase price and net gain/loss. The UConn team depicted a snapshot of its investment process, portfolio performance and attribution analysis, and also gave a presentation discussing its fund and explaining its investment strategy.

The exact evaluation criteria was not made public, but it was a combination of portfolio performance, investment process and poster presentation.

“I believe that we achieved first place due to our investment philosophy, qualitative and quantitative analysis skills learned at UConn and the discussion and chemistry within the team, based on members’ diversified backgrounds,” said Lee, one of the fund managers.

“UConn did an excellent job preparing us to be fund managers. Through the UConn Foundation’s generosity, we are given the chance to manage $2 million of real money,” added Hite. He said the coaching and guidance from Professor and Finance Department Head Chinmoy Ghosh, Professor Michel Rakotomavo, and Finance Administrative Coordinator Laurel Grisamer has been invaluable to the teams’ success.

“We are taught advanced portfolio management techniques that emphasize value investing,” Hite said. “I believe the case studies that we review in class have been instrumental to developing our skills as portfolio managers.”