Students at BW have found new ways to expand their knowledge through different clubs and organizations that focus on social, political and ethical topics in our society. One such club, the Investment Club, has taken to the economic corner of BW and has led students to succeed in building a portfolio and buying into shares to create a strong economic plan.  

At the end of the fall semester, the Investment Club’s portfolio reached a new record of over $1.003 million.  

“It all started with Kevin Jakes. He was the original faculty advisor for the club and they started out with approximately $150,000. Throughout this time, the different executives and board members would give an executive pitch on companies and their stocks and add them to the portfolio. What you see is a culmination of those pitches dating as far back as 2006,” Dane McNulty, a senior finance and accounting double major and the current president of the Investment Club said. 

“Our portfolio consists of 28 stocks, which is made up of 26 equity stocks, one EFT stock, and one mutual fund,” Ryan Rivera, the former chief investment officer. “Recently, we’ve enacted a brand-new strategy this past summer that has been doing very, very well. This allowed us to really push past that one-million-dollar mark. This strategy is called a covered call.” 

The investment club has had interviews with the ARD German Radio station in New York City regarding their predicted output in the short-term for 2024 and the long-term after that.  

“Over the long term, the portfolio is expected to increase in value by an average of between eight and twelve percent,” McNulty said. 

“With the current market conditions, we’ve actually seen a rise in that portfolio value currently according to the Excel that we track hovering around $1,024,000. We can see the continued rise and maybe not stagnate. A lot of it depends on the recent federal interest rate decisions,” Rivera said. 

The investment club plans on continuing to grow their numbers and their portfolio.  

“Really what the investment club is all about is application, applying everything that we’ve learned in the classroom about finance, business, accounting, and really just talking all of that together and applying it to actual trading, actual investment into the stock market and related investments,” McNulty said.  

When plotting their investments, there are rules that they personally follow.  

“We have a pretty strict upside rule when we do our modeling for the club. So, when we run our financial valuation, we run all of our modeling, and then we determine that this stock is less than a 10% upside, then we reach out to invest. It needs to be 10% or greater upside potential based off of our evaluation for us to even consider the trades,” Rivera said.  

The investment club continues to increase its work with other traders and companies. They are currently investing in companies such as Meta, Uber, Steel Dynamics and many others that are benefiting their programs.  

“Every single aspect of our strategy has been successful. We have successfully made realized profit over $14,000 in the last four to five months,” Rivera said.