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The McIntire Investment Institute presents a $75,000 donation
supporting the School's "Back to the Lawn" building project to
Dean Carl Zeithaml. |
“When we invest, we’re buying the
company, not the stock,” says Michael Vellucci (A&S ’07), CIO of the
McIntire Investment Institute. Vellucci is explaining how the MII
generated returns of better than 34 percent last year, with the Dow
down 0.6 percent and the NASDAQ up a scant 1.4 percent. “Anyone can
look at press releases or at public information,” he says. “We
really try to implement a value-added research strategy.”
Vellucci offers the example of the MII’s decision to buy shares in
Harrah’s Entertainment, which runs casinos throughout the Deep South
and Gulf Coast regions. “The knowledge in the market was off—the
assumption was that Harrah’s would suffer huge losses as a result of
Hurricane Katrina,” Vellucci says. “In fact, only a small percentage
of Harrah’s business was affected, which made the stock a bargain.”
Similarly, after MII president Eric Weiss (McIntire ’06) interviewed
a number of doctors about the medical devices produced by Intuitive
Surgical Robotics, the MII board decided to snap up some 400 shares
of the stock, which went on to more than quadruple in value. “We try
to find the piece of information that the market doesn’t know,”
Weiss explains.
By the end of the school year, the value of the MII portfolio had
risen by nearly $130,000, from $368,676 to $494,615. Of these
earnings, the students donated $75,000 to McIntire’s building
project on the Lawn. “Obviously, we’re incredibly grateful to the
students for their generosity,” says McIntire Dean Carl Zeithaml.
“But most importantly, we take a great deal of satisfaction in
watching students successfully apply the lessons of the classroom to
the real world of investing and decision making.”
In recognition of the gift, a room in the new building will be named
in honor of the MII.
Earning Honors
The MII investment team went on to place first in the hybrid funds
category of the portfolio competition of the Redefining Investment
Strategy Education (RISE) Global Student Investment Forum, held
March 30-April 1, 2006, at the University of Dayton. The hybrid
category included investment funds that have derivatives as well as
short and long positions.
The RISE forum, the world’s largest student investment conference,
brings some 1,200 undergraduate- and graduate-level business
students together in an interactive learning environment to discuss
a range of issues facing the financial services industry. This
year’s forum included keynote speeches from such Wall Street
notables as Richard Bernstein, Chief U.S. Strategist and Chief
Quantitative Strategist at Merrill Lynch; Dr. William C. Dudley,
Chief U.S. Economist at Goldman Sachs; and Guillermo Ortiz, Chairman
and Governor of the Central Bank of Mexico. The conference was
co-sponsored by the New York Stock Exchange, The Wall Street
Journal, CNBC, and NASDAQ, among others. “It’s really an
incredibly high-powered group, in terms of both the level of the
presenters and the level of the students,” says Professor Rich
DeMong, the MII’s longstanding faculty adviser.
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