The accounting committee presented the results of the fund over the Winter Break.
Full Report: Winter Break Accounting Report
Portfolio Value Jumps $900 Thousand
Vince Mistretta presents exciting news on behalf of the Accounting Committee:
As of market close today, our portfolio is worth $902,404.77. Compare this with the portfolio’s value when we started actively managing [in August], ~$824,000, and we have around a 9.2% return.
Congratulations to everyone in SMIF.
The current class of managers officially inherited the portfolio at just over $910,000 in April 2011.
GE Spring 2012 BHS
Access full document here:
January 19, 2012
Today in Class:
We welcomed ourselves back for the second semester of SMIF and the final semester for all of the seniors, noted that Chris Brown and John Luthi would come to visit class on February 14, and began Buy/Hold/Sells
Buy/Hold/Sells
- GE by Jordan: Hold
- CELG by Aleem: Hold
- TJX by Jason: Hold
- JNJ by Brendan: Sell. Sold at Market unanimously for $65.00
- GIS by Mark: Hold. After further discussion the class voted (17-4) instead to sell at market.
See the full minutes here: 1-19-12 Minutes
Updating
Hello!
Welcome to the new SMIF website, powered by WordPress and hosted by Bucknell University Blogs.
In an attempt to provide as much information to our stakeholders as possible, we have decided to open the website early before all postings are up to date. This is why only updates and market research from the beginning of the semester is available. Don’t worry – over the next week we expect the gap to be filled and all posts to be current. Sorry for the delay and we look forward to hearing from you soon.
In the meantime, did you know we have a Twitter feed? Check it out at www.twitter.com/bucknellSMIF
October 4, 2011
Today in Class:
The layout of the Fall 2011 Newsletter was discussed and the publish date was set for November 1, 2011.
Sector Reports
- Healthcare (Holdings: CELG, TEVA, BMY) – BMY and CELG are both out-performing the S&P 500, yet TEVA is struggling. Healthcare consumption has been rising every quarter in the past few years, however we see possible political risk present in several lawsuits that are challenging President Obama’s Healthcare bill. Overall, we judge this sector to be risk averse, not volatile, and presents opportunities for high dividend yields. The class has decided to overweight this sector. See full sector report here.
- Industrial (Holdings: GE, FSTR, UPS) – Industrials has been under-performing the S&P 500 but due to a 1.4% increase in construction spending in August and a full point increase in the PMI, we feel that it is best to stay neutral with the S&P 500 sector weighting. See full sector report here.
- Information Technology (Holdings: EBAY, IBM) – IT is a sector SMIF is very interested in, but we are wary of negative returns in the short run. As spending is tied to global demand, we feel increasing our weighting and holdings would be ill-advised. As such, we feel it is best to stay neutral. See full sector report here.
- Telecoms (Holdings: VZ) – Telecoms have high dividend yields and we will investigate diversifying our holdings, but will remain neutral with S&P sector weighting. See full sector report here.
- Utilities (Holdings: ED) – While the sector’s performance has been exemplary, we feel that prices are inflated and increasing in our position in utilities would result in future losses. We will remain neutral with the S&P 500 sector weighting. See full sector report here.
Read the entire class minutes: 10-04-11 Minutes
Industrial Sector Update
Industrials has been under-performing the S&P 500 since mid-summer. We feel this slowdown is temporary and expect a positive long-term trend by Q2 2012. Until recently, the Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI), a measure of the health of the manufacturing industry, has been trending downwards below 50, however there was news yesterday that PMI increased an entire point and construction spending was 1.4% higher in August.
We have identified that there is a large need to diversify and increase our holdings in the sector so that more large cap industrials are part of our portfolio.
Given our research, we feel that the best course of action is to stay neutral with the S&P 500 weighting.
Access the full report here: Fall 2011 Industrials Sector Report
Fall Information Technology Sector Update
We have identified that there are many opportunities outside our current holdings but because spending in this sector depends on the global economy we feel this is not the right time to invest in further companies. Once we feel growth is imminent, we will look at companies like GOOG, which SMIF had previously owned but was sold off during the summer due to concerns about volatility.
SMIF is currently neutral with the S&P 500 but looks to change this position in the near future.
Access the full report here: Fall 2011 Information Technology Sector Report