Category: Investment funds

Next month, GW Giving Day is coming up and we’re excited to showcase one of our outstanding alumni advocates, Kayla Albano. 

During her time at GWSB, Ms. Kayla Albano BS’ 22 was enrolled in Quantitative Investing and Venture Capital classes. Kayla is a 2022 GW Ramsey Scholar and an Associate at KPMG. 

“One of the most rewarding classes that I took during my time at The George Washington University School of Business was the GW Quant Student Investment Fund. Each class was challenging and exciting and was an experience I never thought I would have the opportunity to engage in at the undergraduate level. I learned about the world of quantitative investing through complex research, in-class panel sessions by professionals in the field, and hands-on modeling experience. This class pushed students to stay up-to-date with current market news, adopt a problem-solving mindset, and to always be thinking about how certain decisions in model building could help attain the best results – This was ultimately the most influential aspect of the class that I brought forward with me to my current role at KPMG. I encourage all students in the GWSB to take a class with the GW Investment Institute and I also encourage alumni to give back, as this is an incredible GW commitment to experiential learning.”

Consider supporting the institute by donating during the upcoming GW Giving Day. Click to donate: go.gwu.edu/givetogwii

Full Report: GWII Quarterly Report December 2022

Market Commentary

Following a bearish Q3, the fourth quarter closed the year with a better economic environment despite recession fears. Some major highlights are a better-than-expected GDP growth of 2.9%, the Federal Reserve slowing down its interest rate hikes from 75-basis points in November to 50-basis points in December to tame inflation, China relaxing its stringent COVID policies to ease supply chain challenges and a slight decline in the unemployment rate from 3.7% in October to 3.5% in December showing a resilient labor market. The consumer price index also declined by 0.1% in December, after rising by 0.4% in October. This brought inflation to its lowest rate of 6.5% in December since October 2021.
The S&P 500 closed the fourth quarter with a growth of 7.6% and was the only quarter in 2022 with a positive return. The index however closed the year with a decline of 18.1%. All sectors except the Communication and Consumer Discretionary showed positive returns. The top three winners were Energy 22.8%, Industrials 19.2% and Materials 15.1%. The Real Estate sector closed the quarter with a positive return of 3.8% as mortgage rates cooled off.

For the quarter ended December 31, 2022 the GWII’s Student Investment Funds in aggregate underperformed the benchmark with a return of 5.7% vs. 7.6% for the S&P 500. The funds also underperformed the benchmark in the calendar year -19.2% vs. -18.1% for the S&P 500.

Barikisu Muntari Sumara, GWSB MBA ‘23

We are excited to welcome Prof. Christine Song to the GW Investment Institute. Ms. Song is teaching an undergraduate Applied Financial Securities Analysis class. Students enrolled in this class manage the GW Phillips Student Investment Fund with over $2.5 million in assets under management. 

Prof. Song is a Portfolio Manager at New Century Advisors and manages the US SMID Equity strategy. She has extensive asset management experience and has been a key player in the D.C. investment community. Prof. Song serves on the board of the C.F.A. Society of Washington, D.C., where she founded the Women’s Investment Network (WIN). She is the former President and current board member of the Washington Association of Money Managers (WAMM).

Prof. Song, welcome to GW!

I enjoyed welcoming students to campus this week, meeting them in each of the GW Investment Institute (GWII) classes, and learning more about why they are taking one of our classes and what they hope to learn.

This semester GWII is teaching 100 undergraduate students in the following classes:

GW Phillips Student Investment Fund class: Students serve as analysts and manage approximately $2.4 million (as of 1/20/2023) of university endowment funds. Students focus on a particular sector and use fundamental analysis and the GWII Investment Framework to pitch to sell a current holding to fund the purchase of stock that the student believes will be a better long-term investment. This fund was started in 2008 and named in honor of former GWSB Dean Susan Phillips. The fund’s portfolio advisor is Mark Anfang, GW alumnus and a portfolio manager at Scopus Asset Management.

GW Quant Student Investment Fund class: Students learn about common quant investing strategies and focus on data-driven models. They learn how to identify and analyze different types of data and work in groups to build and test predictive models. The fund was established in 2021 and it had over $88,000 in assets under management as of 1/20/2023. The fund’s portfolio advisor is Aron Kershner, GW alumnus, and Senior Portfolio Manager in the Customized Beta Strategies business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management Quantitative Investment Strategies.

Venture Capital class: Students focus on building and evaluating startups while learning about the venture capital business through group assignments and guest lectures. In this class, students also participate in the New Venture Competition (NVC). The course is taught by Prof. Bill Collier, double GW alumnus and Principal at Noblis Ventures. 

I’m excited to host several GWII Advisory Board members and alumni as guest speakers in GWII’s classes.  

Save the date

I hope you can join and support us during the following events:

GWII Annual Conference and Reception, March 24, 2023 at GWSB

GW Giving Day, April 5-6, 2023 (see list of funding opportunities)

Stay tuned for more details on these events. 

The GW Investment Institute (GWII) teaches students at the George Washington University how to invest and how to think about investing. GW undergraduate and graduate students learn by doing. Our students serve as analysts and portfolio managers, managing approximately $6.5 million in university endowment funds across four student investment funds covering: equities, real estate, and quantitative investing. The institute also offers a class on venture capital. In the GW School of Business finance classes taught by the GW Investment Institute, students:

The GWII has over 1,300 alumni worldwide, many of whom currently work in finance and give back to GWII. Our alumni make contributions by providing guest lectures, mentoring, advising, connections, and donations. 

Your financial support for the GW Investment Institute enables real-world learning and networking opportunities for our students. It also improves a student’s experience at GW and contributes to better industry placement.

Funding opportunities

In the upcoming months the GW Investment Institute will announce a Capital Campaign with a goal to raise $1 million by 2025. Many of these funding opportunities will be included in the campaign. 

Your support is much appreciated and every dollar donated to the institute will go toward providing more opportunities for our students. 

Ways to donate

If you have any questions or would like to learn more, please reach out to Bojana (bjankovic@gwu.edu). 

This guest blog post is written by Ameen Iraqi, a GW senior studying Business Administration with concentrations in both Finance and International Business. The GW Investment Institute partnered with the Office of Undergraduate Programs for this competition. Thank you to all who were involved!

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I am honored and grateful for the opportunity to represent The George Washington University (GW) and the GW Investment Institute at the McGill International Portfolio Challenge (MIPC). MIPC is the world’s premier buy-side finance competition, with universities competing from across the globe to address a pressing issue in the world of finance. 

This year’s case centered on transitioning a fictional Australian pension fund/superannuation fund, to net-zero (greenhouse gas emissions) by 2050 and clearly outlining how to achieve this ambitious goal. I partnered with GW students Rhys Chambers (SEAS ‘25) and Will Ahrens (GWSB ‘25). Collectively, we directed our efforts to thoroughly researching existing superannuation strategies to integrate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) into investment decision-making. Major industry shortcomings existed in comprehensive ESG-tracking for real assets and private equity. Our approach combined quantitative climactic and qualitative investment analyses to guide our strategy in directing the superannuation to achieve a 2050 net-zero target.

In creating our proposal and presentation, we conducted rigorous research and analysis on the sustainable investing space, learning how to specifically bridge the gap between ambitious climate goals and a lack of transparency. Reaching out to GW alumni and professionals in the industry offered us a unique perspective in tackling this issue to lead the change to a future net-zero world. 

The GW Investment Institute was instrumental in providing our team with the necessary resources to compete with top universities around the world, as well as providing insightful and critical feedback to ensure we remained competitive. Through our participation in this year’s MIPC competition, we learned that the effort to make investing sustainable is one that requires deep analytical thought that approaches the issue from a current and future perspective. We also learned that it is crucially important to collaborate with stakeholders being represented and coordinating this effort with other leaders around the world. We hope our work in this year’s competition can serve as a source of inspiration for students and professionals alike so that we may work in unison to achieve ambitious financial and climactic goals in the coming years.

2022 McGill International Portfolio Challenge Overview

The central goal of our strategy relied on reducing current emissions while also planning our portfolio for a future net-zero world. Further, we noticed a significant disconnect between institutional strategies and existing climate efforts, such as the Paris Climate Agreement. Seeing this, our proposal aimed to bridge the gap between existing climate commitments and institutional approaches to achieving net-zero emissions. 

With such a large task at hand, we redefined our investment mandate to maximize risk-adjusted climate-aware returns at low management fees. Redefining our investment mandate at the onset gave us the opportunity to optimize our portfolio while mitigating future investment, climate, and transition risks. We also introduced a comprehensive timeline with five-year intervals to ensure our proposal was Paris-aligned. Furthermore, we employed a data-driven approach to layer in key investment themes to develop an asset-class approach, tailoring our offerings to investors’ and their climate-related ambitions. 

Through our proposal, we learned how intensive our approach needed to be in order to address climate change concerns, providing a clear outline through every step of the process. We also found tremendous value in evaluating the sustainable investing industry holistically, evaluating where competing superannuations stood in terms of their emissions reduction plans. Further, we hoped to address investors’ concerns with how a climate-aware portfolio may achieve greater returns than a traditional portfolio. While difficult to sway those most opposed to climate-aware investing, we sought to create options which would benefit all stakeholders and maintain a positive impact on local communities. 

Despite our progressive investments, our biggest obstacle was completely reaching net-zero, so we maintained a focus on offsetting remaining emissions. Analyzing Australia’s National Inventory Reports, we determined the Land Use and Change and Forestry sub-sector would be the most beneficial in offsetting our remaining emissions. We sought to invest in reforestation and carbon capture and storage techniques, along with investing directly in farmers who are using regenerative agriculture methods to create carbon sinks, and investing in carbon credits through a third party. 

Again, we hope our work in this year’s competition may serve as a source of inspiration for future teams as they compete in future competitions.

Full Report: GWII Quarterly Report September 2022

Market commentary

At the start of the quarter, relatively solid Q2 earnings combined with falling energy prices drove investors’ optimism that inflation had peaked—perhaps appeasing the Fed and providing some evidence of a soft landing. The prevailing sentiment moved equity markets higher from July to mid-August for a short-lived bear market rally. However, markets quickly reversed course following the Fed’s Jackson Hole summit, committing the central bank to bring inflation down to 2.0% at the cost of a recession and a higher-than-expected August inflation print of 8.3%. In response, the Fed raised the federal funds rate by 75 basis points to 3.25% in September to combat rising prices. Despite the Fed’s attempts, consumer prices rose 8.2% from the previous year in September. Excluding food and energy, the core Consumer Price Index rose 0.6% to 6.6%, the highest yearly increase since August 1982. The Russia/Ukraine War, China’s Zero COVID policies, United Kingdom’s economic woes, and a potential European energy crisis all continued to fuel investor pessimism. Consequently, the S&P 500 fell 4.9% in the quarter, bringing the year-to-date decline to 23.9%. The Consumer Discretionary (+3.9%) and Energy (+1.7%) sectors remained positive, while the remaining nine fell into negative territory, of which Real Estate (-11.0%) and Communication Services (-11.6%) were the greatest laggards.
For the quarter ended September 30, 2022 the GWII’s Student Investment Funds in aggregate outperformed the benchmark with a return of -4.5% vs. -4.9% for the S&P 500, while also slightly outperforming the benchmark in the calendar year-to-date -23.5% vs. -23.9% for the S&P 500.

Trevor Haen, Teaching Assistant, GW Real Estate Student Investment Fund

This guest blog post is written by Rhys Chambers, a sophomore studying Computer Science at the GW School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. We greatly appreciate Strategic Investment Group for sponsoring this activity.

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I was excited and grateful to represent The George Washington University (GW) and the GW Investment Institute at this year’s Cornell Women in Investing (WIN) Conference in New York City. The WIN conference aims to encourage young women to pursue careers in investing. It is a combination of panels with professionals in the industry, networking sessions with recruiters, and a stock pitch competition of ten undergraduate teams from different universities around the country. I’m thrilled to be sharing my experience, and I hope to encourage more young women from GW to attend the conference next year!

The trip began at Union Station in Washington, DC. I’m from Colorado, and it was my first time taking the train between two major cities on the east coast, so I had a wonderful time watching the towns roll by as I took breaks from my homework. 

That evening, WIN hosted a networking event where I met the other conference attendees. I met young women from Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, and Claremont McKenna, and we discussed our involvement in investment funds on our respective campuses. Some of the attendees of the conference were members of campus funds that managed their university’s endowment (just like the GW Investment Institute Student Investment Funds) or had their own lens through which they created their fund’s portfolio. After a whirlwind of an hour meeting the other women, Lakshmi Bhojraj ––the Executive Director of Cornell’s Parker Center for Investment Research––made opening remarks and introduced Cameron McElroy, the executive director of AQR Capital Management. She kickstarted the conference with an empowering speech about being a woman in the investment industry, emphasizing that hard work always beats talent. She reminded us to go above and beyond, even on the little projects that may seem futile and irrelevant.

After Cameron’s remarks, the group headed to dinner hosted by Fidelity. Our keynote speaker, Courtney Grimble is an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Analyst at Fidelity, and she shared with us her path from a customer service representative for Fidelity to an analyst. Her key takeaways were to embrace failure and to find strong female mentors early in our careers. I was really impressed by Courtney’s journey and struck by how passionate she was about her position at Fidelity. The same zeal that Courtney expressed with regard to her career was a common thread throughout the rest of the conference panelists.

The following morning began with a lively start to the stock pitch competition portion of the conference. Only teams from ten schools participated in the stock pitches. Since I was not part of a pitch team this year, I was in the fortunate position to be able to float between the two rooms hosting the pitches. Teams pitched companies such as Celsius, Intuit, TopGolf, Nutrien Ag Solutions, and Staar Surgical, and I was impressed by the teams’ ability to effectively communicate the essential information within the 15 minute time limit. All of the teams had a deep understanding of all synergies of the company that they were pitching and were able to respond to even the most difficult of the judges’ questions. 

After the pitch competition, we participated in speed networking rounds with firms sponsoring the conference. These firms included Alger, AQR Capital Management, Capital Group, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Dodge & Cox, Fidelity, Harris Associates, Longitude Capital, Polen Capital, and T. Rowe Price. These networking rounds were a great opportunity to learn more about these firms’ niches and understand the structure of their summer analyst internship programs. 

The conference wrapped up with a couple of panels. The first of these panels was called Buy Side Roles: Investment Management, Quant Research, Client Facing and Other Roles on the Buy Side. The second panel was called How to Recruit Successfully in Research/Investment Management: What Companies Look For. The panelists consisted of a mix of analysts and portfolio managers of the aforementioned firms, and they shared valuable insight regarding recruiting methods and tips for our early careers. They expressed the hardships of working on Zoom over the past couple of years and shared tips for time management skills in this extremely demanding industry. Below are a few points that I would like to share, as I found them to be profound and relevant as I begin the early stages of my own career:

1. Be an independent thinker. Teams are composed of individuals with varying skill sets, and the strongest teams will consist of many different perspectives.

2. Remain curious about the world. Take the time to read about the things that interest you. Never stop learning, regardless of how old you are.

3. It’s okay if you don’t know the solution to a problem. Young professionals often try to prove themselves worthy, but it’s actually a good thing to admit when you don’t know the answer. There is always room to learn. 

Before catching my train back to DC, I took a brief walk around Times Square and Rockefeller Center. Of course I had to grab a slice of pizza before I left, so I made sure to add that stop to my walk too! 

I gained an immeasurable amount of knowledge and connections within the brief 24 hours of the Cornell WIN Conference. Not only did the conference offer invaluable career advice and present professional opportunities, but I also made strong connections with other women at universities across the country, with whom I have remained in contact since the conference. Panelists and attendees alike, these are the women who are and will be breaking the glass ceiling for women in the investing industry. I am so grateful for the opportunity to attend the conference, and I look forward to an enhanced GW presence in upcoming years. 

GW Stock Pitch Day is a project where students combine everything they have learned in class throughout the semester into an investment pitch using the GW Investment Institute framework and fundamental security analysis techniques. Each student has 10 minutes to propose a buy and sell stock recommendation for the portfolio they manage. The pitch is followed by a Q&A. Students then vote on the portfolio recommendations.

The GW Investment Institute (GWII) was established in 2005 with a $1 million donation by Russ and Norma Ramsey. This was the inception of the GW Ramsey Student Investment Fund. Ever since, GW students have been managing real endowment capital and learning how to invest by doing. This fall over 70 students manage approximately $6.5 million in GW’s endowment funds through GW School of Business finance classes associated with the GW Investment Institute and four Student Investment Funds. GWII aims to continue to provide premier experiential investment education and prepare students for job opportunities.

Schedule by Student Investment Fund (SIF):

● GW Real Estate SIF – December 6 from 12:45 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. EST

● GW Real Estate SIF – December 9 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. EST

● GW Phillips SIF – December 10 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. EST

● GW Ramsey SIF – December 11 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:40 p.m. EST

● GW Phillips SIF – December 16 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. EST

(Note: Ending times are approximate)