Last Wednesday, the Student Investment Fund had the privilege to hear from alumnus, Curtis Bulter ‘90, who listened to updates on our current fund positions and provided insight on how we should continue to move forward with the portfolio. Butler graduated from Union with a double major in Economics & Modern Languages and has had a long career in finance. He is currently a managing director in portfolio management at Jennison Associates LLC.
What should we be paying attention to as investors?
Butler began by congratulating us on growing in unison with the market. He encouraged us, as portfolio managers, to think about what our clients are looking for. Can we consistently outperform the S&P 500 by 150-200 bps? If so, then there is no limit to what clients will pay us for our services.
Diversification
Butler posed a few questions for us to think about as we continue to diversify our portfolio like, how much do we want to diversify? Is our goal to invest long-term or short-term? Is our goal to beat a benchmark, or to focus on absolute return? Or how much money do we have in a theme (i.e. AI, Renewable energy, etc.)? PAVE is an example of investing in infrastructure that helped diversify our portfolio. Now is the time when we get together as a fund to discuss goals, our mandate, and how to steady growth with small drawdowns.
Student Discussion
This week SIF came together to debrief on the advice Curtis Butler provided us with. We considered his idea that investing long-term would be our best decision since an endowment is a long-term fund. This would maximize learning opportunities for the group by tracking market trends over time. We will also need to be more active as “portfolio managers” rather than just waiting until the end of the academic term to pitch ideas. Similar to an analyst role in a job, more research will be needed throughout the school year to ensure the best investment decisions for the SIF.
Lastly, Butler pointed out that some of our holdings account for less than 1% of our portfolio. “Are you in or are you out?” he asks. We plan on cleaning up our portfolio, selling off our small holdings, and being fully invested in investment ideas that we see benefitting our position long term.
By Veronica Lopez