STUDENT MANAGED PORTFOLIO BEATS EXPECTATIONS

From left to right: Daniel Jackson, Austin Apple, Samuel Elkanick, and John Gast

The BGSU Student Managed Fund continued to beat the market in the Fall semester as part of FNCE 4360 – Portfolio Management. Four undergraduate students managed a long-only equity portfolio valued at $509,000. The goal of the class is to beat the S&P 500 index (a benchmark widely used in the investment management industry) on a risk-adjusted basis while minimizing deviation from the index. The positive relationship between risk and return means that increasing the level of risk may increase total return but also increases the threshold for risk-adjusted returns. This semester, the BGSU Student Managed Fund beat the S&P 500 index by 0.26% and also delivered positive risk-adjusted returns. The fund also beat the S&P 500 index by 1.84% since August 2016. Total return for the fund was 10.91% over the semester and 28.68% since August 2016. The portfolio beta ranged from 0.8 to 0.9 depending on the measurement period indicating that the portfolio is less risky than the market. The Portfolio Management course will resume in the Fall semester of 2018 when we will open the class to graduate students.