MSc Finance students bag gold at ENGAGE Student Portfolio competition

From left to right: David Kudla, Executive director ENGAGE 2015, CEO & Chief Investment Strategist Mainstay Capital Management, Elham Seedy, Robert Person, Sabrina Tsai, and Tina Zhang.

MSc in Finance students from Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business have brought home gold at the prestigious ENGAGE International Investment Education Symposium, the world’s largest student investment conference.

The Beedie team consisted of students Tina Zhang, Robert Person, Sabrina Tsai, and Elham Seedy, and was coached by Beedie finance lecturer Derek Yee. They earned first place in the Student Managed Portfolio Competition for their performance on the Student Investment Advisory Service (SIAS) fund, taking home $2500 in prize money.

The victory marks the fourth consecutive year that Beedie MSc Finance students have taken the top prize at the world’s largest student investment conferences, having taken home gold at the RISE (Redefining Investment Strategy Education) competition in the previous three years.

The ENGAGE International Investment Education Symposium, held from March 26 to 27 in Detroit, Michigan, was hosted by Wayne State University and Mainstay Capital Management in association with the United Nations Global Compact.

The Student Managed Portfolio Competition sees colleges and universities with student managed portfolios from across the US and Canada compete based on their twelve-month risk-adjusted returns for 2014 in the areas of growth, value, blend/core and asset allocation styles of management.

“SIAS gives participating students an opportunity to connect their studies to the real world, putting our knowledge into practice, and we value the opportunity to utilize our portfolio performance in competition at ENGAGE,” says Tina Zhang, Chief Compliance Officer in SIAS. “We were delighted to participate in the largest student investment conference in the world, and proud to emerge as champions in the Student Managed Investment Portfolio Competition.”

SIAS sees Beedie students managing $15.5 million of the University’s endowment portfolio. It is Canada’s largest student-run investment fund and one of the largest in North America. Each fall, students from the Master of Science in Finance Program are selected to participate in SIAS. The performance of the fund is monitored closely against relevant benchmark indices, and the results are presented quarterly to a Performance Review Committee.

For more information on ENGAGE, visit http://engage.wayne.edu/