A team from Merrimack College has earned second place in the Undergraduate Core Portfolio division of the Quinnipiac University GAME (Global Asset Management Education) Forum’s Global Portfolio Competition for 2020. The winning team manages an investment fund for the Girard School of Business’ Mucci Capital Markets Lab.
“I am so proud of each of our members of the student-managed fund,” said Mary Papazian, managing director of the Mucci Capital Markets Lab. “They continue to adhere to our investment policy and execute a very disciplined approach to investing.”
The Merrimack Investment Fund is managed by Shawn Jarish ’21, a business administration major with a concentration in corporate finance & investments, from East Hartford, Connecticut. Jarish’s team manages a portfolio of financial securities, using the S&P 500 as a benchmark.
The team competed against 40 schools from across the country.
“I’m very excited,” Jarish said. “Merrimack’s name continues to grow as we compete with some of the bigger schools in the nation. It’s very satisfying to bring home two trophies consecutively in our two years participating in this competition.”
The team’s commitment to the program is the reason for success, according to the fund’s senior analyst John Gagnon ’21, a business administration major with a concentration in corporate finance & investments, from Peabody, Massachusetts.
Jarish, Gagnon and Zack Farrell ’22, a business administration major with a concentration in corporate finance & investments from Melrose, Massachusetts, stayed on campus last summer to spend more time in the Mucci Lab. They continued to learn about stocks, developed their strategies and communicated with other team members to prepare for the school year. These efforts helped the team mitigate risk and take advantage of the market growth before COVID-19 affected the economy.
“We really wanted to keep the momentum going and didn’t want to let our fund sit idle for too long,” Gagnon said. “ We wanted to make sure we were acting accordingly.”
The analysts on the team worked well individually and as a team, Papazian said. She expects the team to continue its noteworthy work next school year.
In addition to the Merrimack Investment Fund, undergraduates in the Mucci Lab are also managing the newly launched Merrimack Fixed Income Fund.
