Investment Club Seeks Investors
“To My knowledge, we’d be the only community college nationwide with an investment account,” said Spencer Wieland, President of the Investment Club, and a freshman in Business Administration.
“We intend to do a lot of fundraising over the next two semesters,” said Wieland.
Ideas for fundraisers include finance-related movie showings, such as “Wall Street,” directed by Oliver Stone, and a dodge ball tournament in the McDonough Sports Complex with a trophy award for the winner of the winner’s bracket and a pizza for the winner of the loser’s bracket.
“Our goal is to earn an investment account of 10 thousand dollars before 2014 and we intend to raise at least a quarter of that through fundraising,” said Wieland.
“We’re using a capital account now to practice with stock and prove that we can make money,” said Wieland.
A capital account is essentially a virtual money account that a person can use to buy and sell stock. The companies and the prices are real. The money is the only thing that is not.
“At our meeting, we do a lot strategizing about what stocks to invest in,” said Wieland. “We agreed that we’ll have price limits on when we sell our stocks. For example, if we buy a stock at $25, we’ll sell it at $23 to cut our losses.”
“In selecting stocks, we go off of a lot of nontraditional news sources, but good research is the most important part. You want a solid, diversified account when you’re investing and with 10 thousand dollars, that would be manageable,” said Wieland.
Every week, at their meetings, research committees bring stock ideas to the table, and then those stocks are voted on at the end of the meeting and money from the capital account is invested in them.
“From now on, we’re going to focus on fundraising at our meetings, because most of our money is already invested,” said Wieland.
Although the club’s virtual money is already invested, if an HVCC student wants to try their hand at managing a virtual stock portfolio, there is still a chance.
If any student is interested in learning the stock portfolio game, they can send an email to the investment club’s advisor, Joseph Stenard, at j.stenard@hvcc.edu.
There is an “Investment Challenge” taking place, which ends on Apr. 26. The person who raises the most money during their allotted time gets a chance to meet with a professional investment banker from Goldman Sachs.
The Investment Club meets every Wednesday at 2 p.m. in Brahan Hall, room 202.