This article is an excerpt from the SAF website posted on July 20, 2017.
Anish Chopra, Katherine Chan (AFM 4A), Kevin Ding (CFM 2B), Billy Lam (AFM 4A)
By: Shirley Luu
Twenty-two teams competed last week in the 2017 Investment Research Challenge (IRC), marking the 5th year of the annual competition.
During the exciting one-day event, students were required to analyze mid cap stocks from the Consumer Discretionary sector. The teams had to also deal with an added challenge where the selected stocks had sparse publicly available research.
Those who advanced to the final round presented to an expert panel of industry judges, many of which were previous IRC winners, Student Investment Fund members, and/or SAF alumni. Judges provided teams with feedback on their analysis and performance to enable students to continually improve and enhance their skills.
Beyond the incredible hands-on opportunity, the students also competed for cash prizes totalling $4,000, with the top team receiving $2,000.
The IRC and other SAF experiential activities challenges students to utilize their textbook and classroom learning to then integrate and apply both their knowledge and problem solving skills in realistic scenarios and situations. These opportunities enable SAF students to collaborate with each other in an environment that fosters confidence to perform and be prepared for an uncertain world when they graduate.
Case competitions are a great opportunity for our students to learn outside the classroom. The Investment Research Challenge this year was a big success. With 85 students involved, there is clearly a high level of [interest in gaining experiential value from these competitions]. Additionally, the real value is in what the students learned through the experience in terms of collaboration, analysis, decision making and presentation skills.
- Jim Barnett, Interim Director
The SAF thanks and congratulates all who participated in this year’s competition, with special recognition to Anish Chopra and the CPA-SAF Centre for Capital Markets Education for their generous support of the event.
2017 Investment Research Challenge Finalists:
- First Place - Prize ($2,000)
- Katherine Chan (AFM 4A), Kevin Ding (CFM 2B), Billy Lam (AFM 4A) - Pool Corp
- Second Place - Prize ($1,000)
- Ho Choi, Dominic Lau, Jeffrey Liu, Kevan Lo - Wolverine
- Third Place - Prize ($700)
- Mugdha Gupta (AFM 2B), Lu Jin (AFM 4A), Monica Naguib (Biotech-CPA 4A), Jaskirat Sahi (AFM 2B) - Thor
- Fourth Place - Prize ($300)
- Kevin Osei-Ababio (AFM 4A), Zao Chen (Biotech-CPA 3B), Jasper lam (AFM 3B), Michelle Li (AFM 3B) - Cooper Tires and Rubber
- Fifth Place - Prize ($200)
- Jason Fu (Math-CPA -2B), Peter Huang (CFM 2B), Jonathan Hui (AFM 2B), David Ou (MAcc) – Polaris
2017 Investment Research Challenge Judges:
- Karan Balachandar, Investment Banking Analyst, TD Securities
- Richard Ma, Investment Banking Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets
- Prasanth Pahirathan, Manager Finance, TD Securities
- Andy Wang, Associate, Principal Credit Investments, CPP Investment Board
- Steve Balaban, Chief Investment Officer, Mink Capital and Lecturer, School of Accounting and Finance, University of Waterloo