VCU news

By Cassie Williams Jones

Four VCU School of Business students recently placed among the top 16 teams in the world in an international stock research and analysis competition sponsored by the Chartered Financial Analysts Institute.

The team placed in the top 2 percent of 750 teams that competed globally, making this the highest showing yet for a VCU team in the challenge. VCU earned its international standing during the North American regional competition, which was held March 20 and 21 in Toronto, Canada, where VCU competed against 44 other universities.

The VCU team included seniors Chris Prompovitch, a finance and economics double major; Nick DeRobertis and Corbin Fox, both finance majors and economics minors; and junior Kellie Masters, a business administration major with a concentration in human resources. Cory Bunting, associate director of the Capital Markets Center in the School of Business, served as team adviser, and James Borges, executive vice president for investments at the Guilford Company in Richmond, served as a team mentor.

After winning the CFA Virginia Investment Research Challenge, in which the team beat out all other participating Virginia schools, the student team moved on to the Americas Regionals in Canada.  They advanced through the first two levels of this competition to the final four event, where they competed with the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, University of Hawaii Manoa and Colorado State, presenting in front of an audience of more than 400 people and under the watch of judges including CEOs, hedge fund managing directors and business owners.

The University of Nevada at Las Vegas ultimately won the region and will compete in the international global finale in London on April 12 against the winners of the three other regions: Asia, Europe and Other.  

“Overall, it was an incredible experience,” said Prompovitch. “We are very satisfied with how we placed. It reinforced everything we ever learned in classes, and I cannot emphasize enough how much better it made us at public speaking and presenting. “

“In order to accomplish what they did, and to compete against such high-level schools in the region, it really demonstrates the quality of our students, and the level of commitment that they have,” said Bunting. “They were extremely competitive, and it reflects well on Virginia, and especially VCU.”

The CFA Virginia Investment Research Challenge is a stock research and analysis competition modeled after a program begun by the New York Society of Securities Analysts (NYSSA) five years ago. At that time the competition was focused solely on New York universities. It has now become an international competition sponsored by CFA Institute.

This year, the Virginia schools provided an investment analysis of a particular company’s stock to assess whether it was attractive from an investment standpoint. The VCU team members evaluated items such as balance sheets, earnings revenues, strategies and investment plans to determine their analysis. Their conclusion was to sell the stock, as opposed to buying or holding, and their supporting arguments for that conclusion progressed them throughout the competition.

“We put so many hours of preparation into the project,” said Prompovitch. “We worked very well as a team, and that’s why we made it as far as we did.”

The competition is open to undergraduate and graduate students. Each school has a team of three to five students for the competition, as well as a faculty adviser and a mentor who is a member of CFA Virginia. The teams each analyzed the same company and wrote an eight to ten-page initiation report, which was graded by a team of judges. The written score counted for 50 percent of the total evaluation.

Once the written reports were graded, each team presented their papers by giving a 10-minute oral presentation, followed by 10 minutes of questions and answers by the presentation judges. The presentation counted for 50 percent of the total evaluation.

“This is real work experience here,” said Prompovitch. “It definitely gave us a lot of insight into equity research, and sets us up to go into that professionally, if we so choose.” 

 

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