Finance students in the past have participated in national student competitions. They are a great opportunity to practice and further your knowledge and skills you learned in the finance program at PSU. Because not all of you are finance major, grading will be generous as long as you follow the instructions (e.g., number counts for answers). In addition, it’s not a technical assignment. It’s an opportunity to look back and evaluate what you have learned, how they can be useful, and what else you should learn. Remember you chose finance as your major because you like something about finance. Follow your passion and keep learning what excites you, and you will have a bright future ahead of you. This is the last assignment of this course. Thank you for working hard in this course for the past 7 weeks.

Q1 What is the title of the finance student competition you may consider competing? Hint: You may Google search something like “student competitions in finance”.

Institutional Investor All-America Student Analyst Competition

Q2 Describe the eligibility requirements, if any (e.g., undergraduate college student).

All the participants are undergraduate college students

Q3 What are the competition criteria?

The students had to start their portfolios with $100,000. They were then able to trade, and all trades were recorded.

Q4 What is the deadline for the submission?

Unfortunately, it appears that the competition was held in 2014-2015.

Q5 Why are you interested in this competition?

The interesting part about the competition is that it would have people compete to try and build the best portfolio of stocks.

Q6 What would be a possible project you may turn in for the competition? Describe it in at least 100 words.

The project would be attempting to build the best portfolio I can with the trading and the $100,000 used at the start. An easy option that many people would most likely go for would be to invest in large technology companies and try and earn the best returns from those companies. Although those options would most likely work and have a high return, it would be done by too many people to give someone an advantage at winning the competition. Although using more risky stocks with a higher return would be one option, the option I would attempt would be to use stocks people may not have thought of.

Q7 List things that you learned in financial modeling course that could be helpful for your project in Q6. Describe it in at least 100 words.

Using R would be a fantastic way to see what stocks to invest in. It would be able to narrow down what specific stocks someone could want. Depending on what one of the competitors would want, they could use R to find stocks they are looking for that fit their criteria. If someone wanted to find risky stocks with high returns, they could easily find stocks that fit what they want. If someone wanted less risky stocks with a more consistent return, they could use R to find those stocks. I could compare different stocks and their details using the different codes from each chapter of the course.

Q8 List things that you learned in other finance courses at PSU that could be helpful for your project in Q6. Describe it in at least 100 words.

One of the most recent classes I took was financial management, and most of the class would be extremely helpful with this competition. The class discussed betas, stocks and bonds for the last half of it, and that is all the competition would be about. Learning about betas was extremely helpful for the last section of Financial Modeling, and would also help figuring out which stocks to use for the competition. Learning about portfolios and how to manage stocks was something used in both Financial management and Financial Modeling. The two classes helped show how to look at different stocks and decide which ones would be the best to invest in.

Q9 Check the finance blog below and see if you see any post that may be helpful for your project in Q6. Discuss how it can be helpful in at least 100 words. Hint: The author of the blog writes articles on financial analysis using R. https://rviews.rstudio.com/categories/reproducible-finance-with-r/

The blog would be extremely helpful in this competition with investing in certain stocks. Some of the blog articles are about investing and dividends and would be exactly what someone in this competition would be wanting to look at. One entire blog entry was about investing, and that is the entire point of the competition and could be used to help get an advantage over other competitors. There were multiple blog posts about dividends and there were even two that were just about tech companies. Many people would especially look at the two tech company posts to try and find which giant companies would be the best to invest in for the competition.

Q10 List things that you think could be helpful but not taught/offered at PSU finance courses. Discuss how it can be helpful in at least 100 words.

I cannot think of things not taught at any of the PSU finance courses. Every idea I have thought of has been covered in at least some capacity in the classes I have taken or in the class description for some I have not taken yet. Even if some of the subjects do not have their own class designated to it, they are in other classes to some extent. Financial management had part of the class that focused on stocks and bonds, while the start of the class was building off of financial accounting and other classes. There are quite a few different classes that are offered at PSU, that I feel they cover a wide selection.