For the second year in a row, a team of Henderson State University business students won first place at the regional Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA) Global Investment Challenge in Memphis. They “outperformed” several other teams, including the University of Arkansas and the University of Memphis, according to Dr. Frank Smith, assistant professor of business. The team will now return to the national competition in New York City later this spring.
“We are the first two-time winner and the only back-to-back winner in the history of the competition,” Smith said. “I could not be more proud of our team, which includes students Heather Szflenski, Isaac Fox and Ben McCaleb. We are also thankful to graduate assistant Ben Sivertson for his help in detailing to the team what it took for his group to win last year.”
Smith explained that the Global Investment Challenge was started by the CFA Institute four years ago to give students the chance to compete regionally, nationally and internationally in the process of analyzing real-world companies.
“What you essentially do is research a company and try to determine many different things, from their financial health to the quality of their management, to their market position and likelihood of performing well financially in the future,” Smith said. “Once you get to know the firm, you estimate where you think their stock price will be in the future, both one year and five years out.
“While there are several valuation techniques for determining where that stock price will be, we utilize a couple of standby methods (discounted cash flows, for instance), along with three others that are proprietary to the Henderson State Ross Whipple Student-Managed Fund,” Smith said. “In the end, they are judged at each competition by a panel of CFA Institute members who are usually professionals in the investment field who earn a living doing what the students are attempting to do.”
Smith said the team is also “extremely thankful” to Stephens Inc. for its mentorships and guidance in preparing for the contest. “Their help made it pretty easy to defend our title,” he said.
