IE Business School Competes in Yale Global Network Investment Competition

For the first time, two programs from IE Business School are participating together in the Global Network for Advanced Management Investment Competition hosted by the International Center for Finance at the Yale School of Management.

The competition, which runs from October 2019 through April 2020, consists of analyzing stocks, creating a portfolio, and evaluating the portfolios created by other teams from around the world.

Aimed at students interested in finance, investment and asset management, the competition allows students to work with the stock market and compete globally with other colleges in the same field.

“It provides an enriching experience analyzing securities and pitching investment ideas while also giving students a chance to gain recognition for themselves and the university.”
Marta Pérez, Director of the Business School Dean’s Office

The IE Team I.nvestment E.agles is the first team with students from different programs working together in a competition as a team. It consists of two International MBA Students, Antti Johannes Antikainen and Prageet Kanhaiyalal Sharma, and two Global MBA students, Nicholas Worth and Nesbert Ruwo. Faculty advisor Professor Juan-Pedro Gómez from the Finance Department is guiding them through the experience.

“Working with the Global MBA was an incredibly enriching experience as they are professional experts in this area, making it very easy and fulfilling to work with them,” said Antikainen, IMBA Class 2020.

The Global Network Competition includes 30 leading business schools from diverse regions, countries, cultures, and economies in different phases of development. The different countries include Brazil, Canada, China, Turkey, and the USA among others.

“We can already tell our main competition is the teams from China and Brazil. It is interesting to see the difference in markets from the different colleges,” said I.nvestment E.agles’s IMBA student Antikainen, “The Chinese stock market has very high returns.”

The competition has two parts the Security Analysis Contest, and the Portfolio Performance Contest. The latest has a live daily tracker in which the teams can see their performance and ranking in comparison with the other teams.

“One of the deliverables of the competition was the portfolio. We had to select five companies from Spain’s market to see how their performance in the stock market in the next 6 months worked out,” said Kanhaiyalal, IMBA Class 2020.

“The challenging aspect of the competition was the six-month period. Typically you never invest with this timeframe. You either do it in multiple years or three years minimum,” explained Antikainen. “We had to get creative as investment tools are designed for year investments and not monthly.”

The student’s used filtering techniques learned in the IMBA program, such as event-based stocks, underpriced companies’ key ratio to earnings, and pre-screening based on acquisitions and merging.

The second part of the competition was the Security Analysis which is a detailed report of one of the companies selected in the Portfolio Performance Contest by the team.

Antikainen, with nine years of investing experience - since he was 20 years old - explained the key to the team’s successful group dynamics was the different professional and cultural backgrounds of the members.

“I come from a legal background so it was a pleasure working with people who have CFA certificates (Chartered Financial Analyst) and come from different industries,” said Antikainen. Kanhaiyalal and Ruwo’s professional field is finance, and Worth’s is asset management.

Both IMBA students emphasized how crucial Gómez’s roles as an advisor has been in helping them structure their ideas.

Now, the students have to wait for the six month evaluation period to see the performance results of their mock investments. But, they have already learned some key lessons.

“You need discipline. If you take a call for a long investment don’t check it regularly only if there is compelling news or issues. As if you do you will be uneasy and it is better to let it be,” said Kanhaiyalal and, “Be aware of your personal risk capacity and capability. Be ready to accept the loss.”