On Campus

Carleton business students get $1-million to invest

Student-managed funds proliferate in Canada

Fund-Sprott-Students

Students from The Fund @Sprott

Undergraduate finance students at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business now have an extra million dollars to play with, thanks to their school. It’s a wise investment considering that the students have been seriously outperforming the S&P TSX over the past few years. Managers of The Fund @Sprott have grown the $50,000 they received in 2007 to more than $62,000. Over the same period, the country’s main stock market fell 3 per cent. The cash injection is another vote of confidence in the experiential learning model of student-manged funds at Canada’s business schools. Carleton’s fund works like this. Carefully-chosen student analysts sell their picks to sector managers, who in turn sell their picks to the other managers, based on roundtable discussions and guided by a charter.

Canada has an increasing number of student directed funds. Master of Financial Risk students at Simon Fraser University manage $10.8 million of their own endowment. Undergraduates at the University of New Brunswick have grown a $1-million gift from 1998 into $2.3-million. And the University of Alberta’s decade-old PRIME fund, also run by undergraduates, started with $70,000 and is now worth $1.36-million. But those figures don’t include the most important gains, which are the boosts students get to the future careers. Just look at who is hiring The Fund @Sprott alumni: Morgan Stanley, TD Waterhouse, RBC Capital Markets and the Bank of Canada, just to name a few.

Photo courtesy of James Park

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