Student Managed Investments

Student Managed Investments

A student managed investment fund is a pool of money which business students invest as a learning experience. As of 2008, more than 200 universities have student-run funds, which vary in size from several hundred thousand dollars to millions of dollars.

The objective of a student managed fund is to enrich student education through active participation in financial markets. Students assist in stock selection and management of a real portfolio, thus gaining hands-on money management experience. The students learn to deal with the uncertainty inherent in the process of estimating stock value and contrasting it to stock price. The process helps students to develop their intuition and their competitive drive as applied to investment decisions.

The funds to be managed come from various sources: large specific gifts from one or several individuals, gifts from corporations or from corporate foundations, gifts from many small donors, gifts from university foundations or other foundations, and from carve-outs of university endowment or foundation assets. Some student managed investment funds such as the University of Texas at Austin manage funds for private clients, who are accredited investors under U.S. securities laws. Another special case is the loan that proves the funds at Cameron University.

The business students managing the fund typically take a for-credit course in conjunction with their management duties. Many of these programs belong to the Association of Student Managed Investment Programs.


In addition to actually managing a portfolio, these classes also provide related experiences relevant to being a professional fund manager. For example, the CFA Society of Orange County Foundation (CFAOCF) conducts an annual request for proposals competition which allows student teams from local universities to experience first-hand the process that fund managers must go through in order to be allowed to manage institutional funds.

Read more about Student Managed Investments:  External Links

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