Finance Students Pitch Stocks At International Competition

More than 1,500 finance students, faculty and executives converged on Detroit this spring for the ENGAGE 2015 International Investment Education Symposium. Among them, two teams of WMU students led by Dr. Matt Ross, assistant professor of finance, ready to participate in the stock pitch competition portion of the conference.

Renowned financial leaders shared their outlooks on the economy, stocks, venture capital, alternative investments and international markets. Featured CEOs, presidents, CIOs and economists from some of the most prominent firms in the industry shared their expertise as moderators and panel members to the conference as well as judges for the competitions.

“As WMU’s first showing at ENGAGE, we expected a great learning experience,” says Ross. “Both teams did this and more by using the competition to apply their years of finance education.”

The three-round stock pitch competition started with 27 schools entering video stock pitches that were judged by Mainstay Capital employees, who selected 12 semi-finalist teams to compete at the conference. Among the 12 were both WMU teams.

• WMU Team 1 pitched Ubiquiti Networks stocks and included William Balsamo, Lapeer, Michigan, and Adriano Augusto Deabreu, Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada.
• WMU Team 2 pitched Starbucks stock and included Jacob Adams, Davisburg, Michigan and Eric Reynolds, Delton, Michigan

For the semi-final round, teams presented to a panel of judges during the conference.

“The experience brought my education full circle,” says Deabreu. “WMU does a great job ensuring that its students learn the fundamentals of finance, and being able to apply them in a real life scenario during the competition was wonderful.”

Echoing the learning component of the competition, Ross adds that the teams harnessed resources within the college to prepare for the competition. “They really took the initiative to leverage the amazing resources of the new Greenleaf Trust Trading Room, WMU’s video recording studio, and faculty support to deliver top quality stock pitches. Go Broncos!”

Adams says his participation solidified important concepts from his WMU education. “There are two major things that have clicked for me since the symposium,” says Adams. “One, you must take your point and give it to your audience in the most effective way, and you can’t do that with a cookie cutter template. And two, I learned about the importance of fundamentals in analysis.”

The 12 schools (and their stock pitches) in the semifinal round were:

• Bowling Green State University – Chicago, Bridge, and Iron
• DePaul University – Celgene
• HEC Montreal – Canadian National Railway
• HEC Montreal – Magna International
• James Madison University – United Rentals
• Michigan State University – Patterson-UTI Energy, Inc.
• Roger Williams University – Intercontinental Exchange, Inc.
• Truman State University – Halliburton
• University of Toledo – UnitedHealth Group
• Western Michigan University  Team 1 – Ubiquiti Networks
• Western Michigan University Team 2 – Starbucks
• Xavier University – Gilead Sciences