A group of Hofstra University students took second place at this year’s Adirondack Cup stock picking challenge. The Challenge is a six-month contest sponsored by a boutique mutual fund company that was co-founded by an alumnus from the Zarb School of Business. For the challenge, students from 18 different colleges and universities in the Northeast, managed a hypothetical stock portfolio valued at $1 million. The goal of the competition is to give students the opportunity to test investment ideas and management concepts for portfolios.
Adirondack Research & Management Inc. sponsors the competition. Adirondack Research & Management Inc. is the Advisor to The Adirondack Small Cap Fund (ADKSX), an SEC registered no-load mutual fund established in 2005. During the competition, the Hofstra team posted a 35.38 percent return during the competition.
The return for the Hofstra team beat the Russell 2000 Index, which measures the performance of small cap stocks in the U.S. The index had a return of 20.84 percent for the period. “Hofstra is the only school whose teams have consistently beaten the market since the contest’s inception in 2012. As an alumnus, I am proud of that.” said MBA alumnus Greg Roeder, co-portfolio manager.
The competition began in October 2014. Students had to complete research and create a thesis on their stock picks in order to determine investments and allocations. Each team’s portfolio had to include $1 million that had to be invested in five small cap stocks, each from a different industry. Each portfolio holding had to be between five and 50 percent of the total portfolio. Teams could only make changes twice during the contest.