Investing in the Future

From left to right: Bao Lam, Josue Leija, Mason Hendrickson (Photo by Michael Clements)In the Student Investment Group at the University of North Texas, undergraduate and graduate students learn the tricks of wisely investing money. In regular meetings, they study stocks, get advice from business professionals and earn business-world experience that helps them land top jobs. But beyond the career experience, they gain valuable investing skills that can apply to any major – from biology to finance, members say.

The Student Investment Group was created in 2002 with a $285,000 gift from Col. Guy M. Cloud Jr., and students have grown the fund to about $500,000 today -- with the goal of increasing the portfolio to more than $1 million to provide scholarships to UNT students.

Students follow stocks, research them for a semester, and then present their recommendations to the Student Investment Group for consideration. Members vote to buy, hold or sell -- as they would in the business world. Those decisions are passed on to founding faculty advisor Rusty MacDonald, who has executed the decisions for the group. Ian Liu, associate professor of finance, will serve as faculty advisor in the spring.

"They are involved from A to Z with respect to the investment decisions," says MacDonald, associate professor in the College of Business. "I don't do that for them; they do that themselves, and that is the way the colonel wanted it. It's a completely student-run organization."

Helping all majors

Paul Ucheoma, who is working toward a master's degree in economics from the College of Arts and Sciences, became involved in the Student Investment Group in 2011 when he was an undergraduate student studying finance in the College of Business.

The group is open to all majors at UNT – and Ucheoma says all students can benefit from the investing skills they will learn.

"It's a huge issue whether you're a finance major or biology major," says Ucheoma, who is also the current president of the Student Investment Group. "You have to know how investments will work for your own personal reasons. It's great to work for money, but having money work for you is an important concept people need to know."

Getting professional experience

Students will soon have another way of earning professional experience in the Student Investment Group. The UNT Foundation plans to give the group another $100,000 to manage, paying a 1 percent fee.

"This will give them different kinds of professional experience," says Marilyn Wiley, interim dean of the College of Business. "Right now, they are responsible for themselves. Here, they have a client and have to meet a client's needs and report to the client."

Mason Hendrickson, a sophomore finance major, is a junior analyst in the Student Investment Group, where he found out about a TD Ameritrade collegiate trading competition, called the thinkorswim Challenge. He and his two teammates -- Josue Leija and Bao Lam -- came up with a winning strategy. Their win was featured on CNBC's Closing Bell and in local media.

"In the Student Investment Group, they teach people to get a stock for a good value and good dividend. The risk is low and it's the best way to make money over the long run," Hendrickson says. "This competition was much higher risk. We saw guys making hundreds of thousands in the first day. We immediately had to go to a different plan."

Their new strategy paid off. The group of three grew its portfolio by 213.04 percent to a final portfolio value of $1,565,175.83 at the end of four weeks of trading. For their first-place finish, each student had $3,500 deposited into his own TD Ameritrade brokerage account. In addition, TD Ameritrade donated $30,000 to UNT, which will create a fund to benefit the Student Investment Group.

"In one semester, it changed a lot of things for me," Hendrickson says. "It put money in my pocket and brought money to the school."

Top-notch careers

Experience in the Student Investment Group has paid off for many members, with former students earning positions at such companies as Goldman Sachs, Fidelity and major accounting firms.

"It's been amazing," says Wiley. "It gives students the inspirational opportunity for seeing the results of an investment decision with real money. Because of the knowledge and experience they're gaining and because of the contacts they're making, they are getting terrific job opportunities."

In addition, members of the Student Investment Group also have access to 12 Bloomberg terminals in the trading room in the Business Leadership Building. And beyond learning how to invest, they learn how to manage a student organization – setting up an organizational system, planning meetings and arranging for business professionals to speak to the group on a regular basis.

"For an organization run entirely on volunteer labor, it's amazing the success it has had and continues to have," MacDonald says. "Hats off to the students who have taken such an active interest to volunteer their time and effort for such a great cause."

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