Category — Business Success

Was 2008 the year you knew you could have beat the market? Students of the Johnson School at Cornell University did just that. The student run Cayuga MBA Fund delivered a fourth quarter loss of just -1.29 % and actually came out ahead by 0.42 % for the year. Compared to the Dow Jones Industrial Average (down 33.8 %) and the S&P 500 (down 37 %) that’s no small feat. So how did they do it?

Key Word for Student Investors: Prudent

The Cayuga Fund’s strong performance was driven primarily by what Cornell MBAs describe as a ‘prudent risk management strategy’ that had shorts and longs performing comparably for the year.

“In spite of governmental efforts to prop up the financial industry and by extension, the equity markets, the economic picture remains very challenging and we expect this trend to continue throughout 2009. The Cayuga Fund intends to remain focused on generating absolute return through a combination of selective stock-picking and prudent risk management.” 

The top long performer (at at fourth quarter return of 65%) was Yanzhou Coal Mining Company (YCZ). This Chinese company mines, prepares, transports, and sells coal. It’s done well amid the growing global demand for inexpensive sources of energy.

The best short performer was American Apparel (APP), generating a return of 76 % in the last quarter. This company manufactures, distributes, and retails casual wear apparel for men, women, and children. Despite a weak retail segment, APP has performed well relative to many of its peers.

MBA Hedge Fund Creates Opportunities for Students

Cornell’s Johnson School created the Cayuga MBA Fund as an investment vehicle that aims to provide a competitive rate of return to its investors, but also serves to offer educational and professional opportunities to the Johnson School MBA students. By combining the cutting-edge research of faculty members with the participation of student portfolio managers, the fund provides a return far greater than that which is received by its investors.

Student portfolio managers, quantitative analysts, traders, and an investor relations manager all manage the fund under the guidance of faculty and outside investment advisers. Together, they work to achieve consistent positive returns that are uncorrelated with equity market benchmarks, and to maintain significantly lower volatility than the broader market.

Parker Center the Envy of Wall Street

The Cayuga MBA Fund also benefits from the support of Cornell’s Parker Center, which is a classroom for real-time stock quotes, international data feeds, and financial analysis software and data. This center is valued at more than $1.8 million per year in licensing fees. Representatives from Cornell say it’s as good as, if not better than, the resources found at many Wall Street firms. With this kind of return, who could argue?

What’s the lesson here? Either get yourself to business school, or give you money to someone who’s already there!

Marketing is a must in today’s fast-paced world. Whether you’re running a corporation, a one-person office, a retail store, even a non-profit organization, a constant focus on marketing is crucial to your operation.

Good marketing makes your enterprise grow. That’s why major corporations have entire departments devoted to marketing.

Yet your marketing strategies have to be continually honed and updated. Marketing does not have to go beyond your town, your county, or your state. But it can go national or even worldwide. Marketing can be limited or limitless in this age of the World Wide Web.

And even if you can’t afford a marketing department or to have one person in your organization handle marketing full time, you can still get your company’s name–plus your products and services–out there.

Here are some marketing techniques you can try. You don’t have to do them all. You might want to do just a few to start. But remember: Marketing is essential to your success. In marketing, no news is bad news. You want the buzz. [Read more →]

So who were the big winners at the Oscars, the Grammys, and the Super Bowl? It may just have been the suits on Wall Street.

If you’re looking toward a career analyzing what makes Wall Street tick, you might want to look at a growing trend that links big annual TV events to making money on the Big Board. It’s a strange phenomenon, but researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire have found that there’s big money to be made by investing in the stocks of companies that advertise during the Super Bowl. The same trend seems to be taking hold for advertisers on other annual major TV events like the Academy Awards.

[Read more →]

An old adage has it that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. But with the advent of the Internet that’s no longer the case, and business students can see their careers derailed even before they get started because of bad publicity on the Net.

What’s worse is that these students may be the ones responsible for tarnishing their own reputations.

When deciding on someone to fill a position, HR directors are increasingly turning to the Internet to track down information about applicants, googling you without your knowledge.

And what do these searches reveal? Many HR directors privately admit that they turn down many otherwise qualified candidates for internships and paid positions as a result of something disturbing they read on an applicant’s MySpace page, for instance. Though these HR directors will never tell you the job went to someone else because of something they found objectionable about you on a site like MySpace or Facebook, you can expect to be turned down for one job after another simply because hiring managers feel that you are a bad influence, a disruptive force, a personal of questionable character, or someone who might spend more time surfing the Net than working. [Read more →]

Are you getting your name around on the Internet? You probably spend a lot of time online already, but are you making the most of that time? Are you getting known as the go-to guy or gal in your profession, laying the groundwork for getting a job–or getting a better job?

You don’t have to be an established professional to make the Internet work for you. In fact, if you’re a business student you can start building a solid business reputation right now by using the Internet effectively.

[Read more →]