An Interview with Alex Grebe, President of the Cornell Investment Club.
1. What are the goals of Cornell Investment Club (CIC) and can you tell me how the organization got started?
The purpose of the Cornell Investment Club is to teach our members the principles of investing through hands on experience while at the same time making a profit for those invested in our fund. The hands on experience comes in the form of stock pitches, where any member can propose buying (or selling) a security of their choice. We also run an investing 101 series each semester, teaching topics from “What are stocks?” to DCF analysis and options pricing. CIC was founded in November of 1997 by Peter Sterling '98, Jay Braunstein '98, and Josh Benjamin '99 with the same basic goals as I mentioned above.
It was during this time period that the “dot com”-NASDAQ bubble started to gain momentum and club members invested significant amounts of money in the fund. The development of the internet around this time also made equity research much easier than in the past, especially for undergraduate college students.
2. What is the structure of the CIC?
CIC’s structure consists of the Executive Board, the junior analysts, and general members. The E-board is led by the President, who runs the weekly meetings, handles most of the administrative work of the club and has a role each stock pitch. The Vice President helps with the administrative duties and organizes club events and stock pitches. The Portfolio Manager is in charge of making all trades and cash transactions, and making recommendations based on portfolio theory metrics. The Marketing and Alumni Relations Directors are involved in undergraduate recruitment and maintaining contact with CIC alumni. The 101 Series instructor prepares and presents material for our 101 Series. We also have 7 senior Analysts, each covering a different sector of the market. Each senior Analyst manages a team of 3 junior analysts, all of whom are responsible for covering any news in their sector and providing quarterly updates for any of our holdings in their sector. General members are just as welcome to participate in meetings and stock pitches.
3. Alex, can you tell me about yourself? How did you get involved with the CIC?
I’m a senior in the College of Engineering, majoring in Operations Research & Information Engineering. I had done a small amount of “investing” with my own money, prior to coming to Cornell, but it amounted to not much more than gut-feeling day trading. I wanted to learn more about the basics of making good, research based investments so I joined CIC in the fall of my sophomore year. At the time, I was a chemical engineer so I was drawn to oil, natural gas, etc. and eventually became the energy analyst. I was involved in a number of stock pitches, energy and non-energy related, and was sequentially elected as President last year. Outside of CIC, I like to play/watch soccer and follow the FC Barcelona football club.
4. What advice do you have for students at universities without a student-run fund but are looking to gain investment experience?
CIC members and I have definitely learned the most and gained the most experience by researching and presenting stock pitches. A stock pitch consists of a few main thesis points, and proving that these thesis points will hold for the foreseeable future. This involves going through 10-K’s, earnings call transcripts, etc. A thorough stock pitch will take us 40+ hours to put together, although you can easily spend much more time than that. Making a profit is a desirable side effect. It’s also important to present your pitch to others; for students that go to schools without an investment club, a friend with a similar interest in and knowledge level of investing is just as good. It’s easy to convince yourself a stock is good/bad, but it makes your thesis that much stronger if you can really convince others as well. The last piece of advice I can give is to keep following stocks that you’ve lost money on. All too often people will follow their winners, but sell their losers and forget about them. By continuing research on your past losers, you might be able to detect a pattern that can help you avoid future losers. All these things can be done without a student-run fund.
5. Where can students go to get more information about the CIC or to reach out to you?
The best way to learn more about CIC is through our website, http://www.cornellinvestmentclub.org/. All of our past presentations are up there, as well as information about joining the club. I haven’t had too much contact with investment clubs outside of Cornell, but I would love to hear from club presidents, or anyone else, from other universities. We’re always looking to improve CIC and I’m sure there are plenty of great investment clubs out there with a lot of advice to offer, so please contact me at awg25@cornell.edu.
