4/22/13

St. Lawrence Students Finish Second in Stock-Picking Event

CANTON – A team of four students from St. Lawrence University placed second in the 2013 Adirondack Cup, a competition during which college teams competed against each other over six months to build and grow a small cap portfolio of stocks.

St. Lawrence students taking part included seniors Matthew Dyer, Marc Minogue, Ahmed Nofal and Michael Scott. Associate Professor of Economics Cynthia Bansak was the group’s faculty advisor. An awards ceremony is scheduled for Tuesday, April 30.

Students from 18 colleges and universities across the Northeast participated in this unique competition, managing a hypothetical small cap portfolio of stocks valued at $1 million. The goals of the competition, which is in its second year, are to teach students the difference between trading stocks and thinking through their investment decisions for the long term and to help them make appropriate connections in the financial services sector as they prepare to enter the job market.

At the start of the competition in October 2012, students were expected to do their research, create a thesis on their stock picks and determine investments and allocation by Oct. 14.  Each portfolio had to include a hypothetical $1 million invested in five small cap stocks (defined as companies with market caps between $50 million and $3 billion).  Each of the five stock picks had to be from a different industry and each holding had to be at least 5 percent but no more than 50 percent of the portfolio. Teams were allowed to make changes to their portfolio only twice during the contest period.

The competition is sponsored by the advisor to the Adirondack Small Cap Mutual Fund, an owner-managed fund recognized in 2011 and 2013 by Lipper Inc. as the best small cap value mutual fund in the U.S. for the three-year period from 2008 to 2010 and the five-year period from 2008 to 2012, respectively.