A team of students from the University of Indonesia named the Yellow Jackets won first prize in the 2016–17 Global Network Investment Strategy Competition hosted by the International Center for Finance at the Yale School of Management, taking home a prize of $3,500. Value Investors, the team from FGV-EAESP in Brazil won the $1,500 second-place prize.

This is the second year of the investment competition, in which each team selects five stocks from companies based in their home country. The stocks are tracked against a national index to measure net returns. All of the participating teams’ portfolio returns are viewable on a real-time leaderboard throughout the competition on the competition website. The Yellow Jackets and Value Investors had the top-two performing portfolios among the 22 teams of all the network schools that participated, including the National University of Singapore (in third place) and ESMT Berlin (in fourth). 

Earlier this year, as part of the Security Analysis Contest, teams in the final round presented their stock pitches via a live, video conference call to a distinguished panel of judges. The panel included Jim Chanos, founder and president of Kynikos Associates, Katalin Gingold, co-head of equity research at Cartica Capital; Eddie Tam, CEO & CIO of Central Asset Investments, and Robert Pohly, founder and portfolio manager at Samlyn Capital.

The National University of Singapore’s team, the Intelligent Investors, took home the $3,500 Security Analysis Prize.

Reflecting on the Yellow Jackets’ successful strategy, winning-team member Aditya Jaya Lauson ’17 had advice for future competitors: “First, they should know beforehand that the stock market is a market full of snake-oil salesmen. Second, they should do their own homework. Third, using Peter Lynch’s first principle, they should not buy stocks that you cannot draw with a crayon. Fourth, they should be up-to-date with the latest trends in the market, yet still be levelheaded and keep their own opinions. Fifth, and most important, they should read a lot!”

Yellow Jacket Iqbal Afifi ’17 said that if he and his teammates could go back in time, they would choose the same stocks. “We are sure that given the time, eventually the market will realize that those stocks are mispriced and we will wait patiently. As George Soros said, ‘Investing is like watching grass grow. It is boring.’ Soros was half right: it takes time for the market to form an opinion on a stock, but it wasn’t boring.”

The Value Investors of FGV said that the experience served to further hone the skills they acquired in the classroom, while also exposing them to the value of networked learning. “Joining the 2016–17 Global Network Investment Competition was a valuable opportunity to put into practice our skills and learning experience at FGV. The competition gave us the opportunity to challenge high-level students from the greatest universities around the world and to apply in real-time our knowledge in a way no classroom activity could do. We had to be highly selective and diligent with our asset portfolio in order to be competitive and deliver above-the-average results.”