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”.
ETF Global Portfolio Challenge
Q2 Describe the eligibility requirements, if any (e.g., undergraduate college student).
To be eligible to the prizes offered in the ETF Global® Portfolio Challenge you must be an undergraduate or graduate student enrolled in an accredited university or college.” From what I found online it said that you can register as an undergraduate or grad student. Along with this you can also register as a schools well, potentially for a specific class competition.
Q3 What are the competition criteria?
You register through a program called Stockfuse and throughout the semester they record your portfolios returns. This is all done with paper-trading of course. The top 25students with the highest performing portfolios are invited to the ETP forum in New York City.
Q4 What is the deadline for the submission?
The end of enrollment for the spring competition was February 19th, although they mentioned they will soon be announcing when the next competition will begin.
Q5 Why are you interested in this competition?
I find interest in paper-trading since it mimics exactly what the real stock market is doing. This allows you to build experience with less financial risk on your end. Also, it’s a competition that prioritizes ETFs which allows you to hold positions that are differentiated a lot more than normal individual company stocks.
Q6 What would be a possible project you may turn in for the competition? Describe it in at least 100 words.
Since this competition is based on your yearly returns I wouldn’t be focusing on creating a project technically. Although something I could potentially do is use what I learned in this class with RStudious to find and analyze potential ETFs I would add to my portfolio to stay in the lead of the competition. By doing this it would allow me to cross analyze a limitless amount of potential ETFs that would promise a higher standings in the weekly rate. Along with this it would share that outside research I was doing to keep a winning portfolio. This would allow me to share more data with the company running ETF Global Portfolio, and any individuals asking how I decide on my picks.
Q7 List things that you learned in the financial modeling course that could be helpful for your project in Q6. Describe it in at least 100 words.
What I learned in the financial modeling class that would assist me are directly related to RStudios. Before I believed outside sources such as market watch and yahoo finance were the best options for stock analysis. Although, with this class I now understand there are other options such as RStudios. Along with this, I more directly learned what plugins and commands I could use that would build the portfolios I’d use. This allows me to organize more of the data I’d be using in one seamless spot. Also, just as a whole being able to cross analyze multiple ETFs and stocks in one organized space. Additionally allowing me to publish my work online for storing and sharing.
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.
Some things that would help me with this project for the selected competition that I learned in other PSU courses all relate around the same thing. This is my ability to analyze and process financials as a whole and understand what tools I need to seek to understand them more. What I mean by this is these courses over the last four years gave me the tools I need to confidently understand the basics of finance. One that specifically I hold high is financial accounting last year. This class built the foundations of true accounting for me. Whether it was more directly related to accounting or even the soft overview of stocks it kept me interested and learning more!
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/
After checking out the finance blog I decided the “Daily volumes’ ’ forum would assist me the mostin myproject. The reason for this is it had packages that assist in analyzing and the organization of certain stocks and ETFs. This as mentioned previously would assist me in the selection of the stocks and ETFs I would select for my portfolio that I would use in the competition. Also it would help me build a Rstudios markdown file that outlined my selections and show why, this becoming my project. The forum also included information that would help me mimic yahoo finance which would assist in my ETF selection greatly.
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.
PSU finance courses were all interesting to me. The only suggestions I can make is finding new ways to pull in the students more. An answer to this could be more virtual competition with weekly upgrades. If this is done as the professor you can set weekly check ins that allows you to gauge the amount of work each student is committing too. The work being shown can directly reflect the grade they receive. Another potential option is bringing in local businesses to share their financials and allow the students to assist in their accounting. This shows a local real world example and allows a more hands on feel.