Investment Club seeks Wall Street trip

Durgin McCue

Staff Writer

The Investment Club has been one of the most active on campus this year, and they are seeking opportunities to build on their success.

Recently, the budget of the club is a prominent issue for the Investment Club because of the large number of students involved. “This year [the budget] grew at the maximum percentage allowed. Do I think it is a good enough growth? No,” said club president Brandon Combs. “We have a very small amount I think compared to some of the other clubs that I know.”

Budget issues challenging the organization have made it hard for the club to take a trip to New York City. The trip would begin with a bus ride into the city followed by a self guided tour of Wall Street.

“The goal of it was just to get down there and see Wall Street,” said Sean Dales,  the director of risk management. “We see the stock price move up and down, but these guys [referring to wall street firms] are actually the ones driving it.”

Combs presented a proposal to the Student Senate to attempt to get funding for the trip. However, the proposal was rejected.  “We came to an agreement last semester that we need to reapproach the Senate with this to kind of hash it out and finalize it,” said Combs. “There was one entertainment factor that we were looking at, at the end of the night, that would be the majority of our costs.”

The trip was going to include a dinner cruise, but the club voted 13 to 9 in favor of cutting the cruise from the trip. The elimination of the cruise from the agenda decreased the cost of the trip by $120 per person.              

“This was a case were we really wanted them to come back to us with some other ideas because we thought that it was a little too steep for one club,” said Adam Day, senior senator. “Even though there are a lot of students in it, we have be equal to all clubs, and we really want them to be able to go on this trip.”

The stated purpose of the Investment Club is to help students acquire knowledge of finance and other aspects of investing.

The two hour meeting last Wednesday included discussions of cash flow yields, market caps, gross margins, and other terms that the aspiring investors at the meeting hope to become fluent in. The active nature of the meeting was clearly illustrated by whiteboards, which were blank only hours earlier, completely covered in stock analyses by the end of the meeting.

There are a lot of great things that we provide for the students,” said Brandon Guerrette, the head of economics for the club. “There are a lot of kids that come into this club with no knowledge whatsoever of investing, investment strategies, and what not, and we provide them with that information.”

The club provides this information through direct contact with members as well as training sessions and literature distributed at meetings. Two packets were distributed at the last meeting: one titled “Technical Analysis” numbering 14 pages, and one titled “Fundamental Analysis” numbering 18 pages in length. Both packets were written by the vice president of the club, Nikolas Strom.

“I make packets, I give them out to the people at the meetings,” said Strom. “We really want to just teach our members about what they can do to help themselves in the future.”

Strom, who is also known for wearing red, white, and blue shorts in the dead of winter, continued, “As long as under the economic cycle we understand why businesses do what they do here, we will be able to plan for the futures.”

The futures of its members is clearly something the investment club is concerned about as indicated by their ambitious slogan: “The millionaire machine.” This sentiment is reiterated frequently throughout the meeting by the executive board of the club.

“This is your club,” announced Dales to the audience at one point during the proceedings. “This is for your benefit.”