Investment Fund offers financial experience

The Madison Investment Fund, a student organization aimed to provide students with the opportunity to integrate financial theory with the application of real investment strategies, has received praise from investors for its performance.

When the organization started in 2000, it was given $100,000 from JMU Endowment. Due to its past success, the Endowment has given MIF permission to expand to include "any stock trading on one of the three major American exchanges, NYSE and NASDAQ," said senior MIF President Dan Hall.
The organization received praise earlier this month at a conference sponsored by Virginia Tech’s Business School.

"Professional money managers praised us for our ability to ‘beat the market,’" said senior Alpha Kiflu, manager of the technology sector of MIF. "‘Beating the market’ is considered by many academics to be sort of a statistical anomaly because it is not supposed to be consistently possible. MIF has been able to because of the direct hard work of our analysts, managers and faculty, and our structure."

Sophomore Paul Meierdierck, manager of the non-cyclical sector of MIF, said that JMU has done exceedingly well compared to other schools, especially considering MIF had fewer funds than other organizations.

"We’ve made do with what we had, and have been successful," Meierdierck said. "We had fewer funds but we’ve gone further than others."

He also said that he was proud to be part of the conference at Virginia Tech. "The speakers were impressed by how well we did. Our numbers spoke for themselves."

MIF was ranked fifth in the nation among undergraduate and graduate student investment funds at the Rise Competition in 2002. Managers plan to attend the competition again this spring.

Students interested in MIF must keep up with current market information, Andino said. Interested students submit a cover letter, résumé, application and will have to present a prospective stock in which to invest. "It is a really competitive interview process," Andino said.