The Students of Finance Association placed second in the Financial Management Association’s annual Investment Analysis Competition. Over 35 teams nationwide submitted an analysis report for the competition. Out of those teams, SOFA was selected as one of three finalists who would present their report in person at the Financial Leaders’ Conference. The presenting team included SOFA members Hunter Turgeon, Amaya Yarid, Taylor Corum, Mahima Patel and Abdur Rehman.
“ETSU has never competed in this challenge before,” said Yarid. “We’ve gone to the conference the past three years that I’ve been in the club, but we’d never really considered competing. And since this was our first time competing in this challenge, we didn’t have super high expectations. We just were going into it as a good learning experience and a cool thing to do.”
“It was a pretty big deal for us because we weren’t going against itty-bitty schools either,” added Corum. “They were competitive schools in finance, so it speaks really highly of our department.”
The Investment Analysis Competition operates like a stock evaluation. Each team is given the same company and then performs an evaluation of that company and their stock prices. Then the teams make a recommendation to either buy or sell stock based on their findings.
The competition took place in two parts: the initial submission and the presentation. For the initial submission, SOFA put together a 10-page report of their findings along with visuals such as charts. The second part included only the top three chosen teams who each prepared a presentation with the information from their report. Then those three teams presented at the conference in front of a panel of judges and an audience of around 300 attendees.
SOFA has grown significantly within the past few years, allowing for more opportunities like attending the conference and being able to participate in this competition. SOFA also holds speaker events that feature guests who work in various areas of finance, as well as having volunteer opportunities to give back to the community.
“We’re a club for mainly finance, econ and business students, but we’re welcoming to all other majors—anybody who wants to learn about finance and the world of finance,” said Yarid.
In April, SOFA will be having their Financial Literacy Week. It will be open to all students and will offer an opportunity for students to learn more about general financial topics such as credit cards and investing.
“We do a lot with Financial Literacy Week and working with educating the student body in general. I think it’s very important,” said Corum. “I didn’t know a ton coming into college about credit, debt, finances, investing and all that. It’s cool to work with students and educate them. I think that’s why we attract students of different majors.”
SOFA plans to continue participating in the Investment Analysis Competition in the coming years and is already thinking of ways to continue growing and improving based on what they learned through this initial experience.
“I think that the competition was just a great way for us to represent ETSU. I was really grateful for the opportunity to put our school on the map and to represent us well,” said Yarid.
