October 2011

Thank you all for coming too this week’s OIG meeting. Hope everyone had a wonderful fall break. We will have more exciting stuff for the second half of semester.

This week is club donations. This is an OIG tradition that holds every semester where we donate up to 2000 dollars to campus clubs as a way of giving back to Bryn Mawr.

The first club is the CCSA (Chinese Culture Study Association). CCSA is asking for funding for their Chinese New Year Dinner. This will be a Bi-Co event and about 85 guests are expected. The treasurer of CCSA presented the list of the items, including food (both raw and processed) and beverages that they plan to have at the dinner. They planned to purchase all the items in Chinatown. The time of the dinner will be early February. The are asking for 560 dollars.

The second club is the ASA (Asian Students’ Association). Members from ASA are asking for funding for the Asian Culture show on the November 12. In order to match the theme of this year’s culture show, this is diversity in Bryn Mawr Campus. They plan to invite Philippine dance team and perform Chinese ribbon dance. They ask for funding for miscellaneous items including food and guests and ect. The total budget of the event will be 3000 dollars. The amount they asked for is 500 dollars

The third group is the ‘Seven Sisters in China’. The goal of ‘Seven Sisters in China’ is for women from Seven Sister schools to have better communication and connections among themselves. The presenter showed a video about the conference in Beijing, China. The video talks about the conference they had in Beijing. The reason why OIG should donate the money is to help spread word about Bryn Mawr. The estimate amount is 3000 dollars. The amount they are asking from OIG is 600 dollars.

The fourth club, MUN presents its proposal to support the club to go to Model United Nation Conference in UPenn. They want all the delegates will be able to go to the conference from Thursday to Sunday. MUN ask for funds to reimburse the transportation for 12 of their members. They have funding from SGA  but they still need 300 dollars to cover transportation costs.

The fifth club is the Art club. They are asking for money from OIG to purchase new sewing machines in the art studio. They have a total of three sewing machines and, two of three are working poorly and one of them is completely broken. The art club provides sewing class with their own funding. Both classes and sewing machines are open to all people at campus.

After the discussion in the group about the donation decisions, we decided to give four of the five clubs the money they requested.

Dear all,

Thanks for coming to OIG’s last meeting before fall break. Sophia introduced a form created by our previous president Sasha. This form will help us keep a record of all the stocks we purchase henceforth. The form will record some detailed information about the stock we purchased, including the PE, Beta and stock number at the time we purchase the said stock.

Lingyi went over our portfolio starting with a video talking about market updates. The financial crisis in Greece continues to have an impact on the global financial market. Microsoft and Yahoo are reported to prepare their financial books. Market has different attitude towards Bernanke’s new economy stimulate plan. We had the big news about the passing away of Apple’s former CEO and co-founder, Steve Jobs. We would be anxious to find out more about how that new would affect our portfolio because Apple occupies a big proportion in our portfolio.

Bank of America and Morgan Stanley both need to find enough capital to meet new regulations. Morgan Stanley faces more problem because its exposure to European debts.

Lingyi start her presentation about the market. There several distinct features about current market:

•  Banking sectors, it’s hard to find anyone doing well,
•   Market is at its cheapest in 20 years, which means it has the best buying opportunities,

Lingyi recommended REIT (real estate investment trust), to be good options for OIG’s future investments. They are usually stable compared to other sectors in the market because most come from stable sources, like rent for real estate. Because of the stable cash generating, they give out dividends and usually don’t profit much from the transaction.

The specific stock Lingyi recommend is HCP, which is a REIT company. HCP is a defense stock. The five compositions of the company include hospitals, senior housing and health care. The net assets are worth about 18.6 billion dollars. The negative potential problem is changes in government policies such as cuts in funding for health care. Also hospital revenue might be affected by acquisition, and cash generated more concentrated in certain sectors.

The members voted to decide to look at HCP at a later date. If there are any stocks you are particularly interested and want OIG to consider purchasing, let one of the Exec Board members know about the stock.

Wanda presents the words of the day.

• EPS: Earnings per share (Net income –dividends on preferred stock) /average outstanding shares
• PE ratios: market value per share/ EPS,

Despite the careful calculation of each ratio, the indexes of ratios are only just one of the measurements of the stock. To make the decision, we will need more information about the operation of the stock and company. We looked at several companies with odd EPS or PE ratio, such as LinkedIn.

For the week after the fall break, we will have one of OIG’s tradition club donations. Please look forward to our emails about the New York trip on October 21^st.

Thanks all for coming to OIG’s this week’s meeting.  We had our Careers in Finance tutorial. Sophia already sent out the PowerPoint slide we presented through OIG mail list. You can always go back and look through it again

Firstly, Lingyi went through our portfolio with the updated situation in Market. The general performance of the market is weak and most of our stocks are

In general there are six sectors in Finance:

• Investment Banking
• Equity research
• Equity Sales & Trading
• Fixed Income Sales & Trading
• Asset Management
• Private Client Services

Wanda started talking about her experience during her summer Internship in Investment banking. She introduced everyday life of an intern in a small investment bank firm.  As an intern, she was responsible for all the paperwork of excel chart and PowerPoint presentation and Public Information Book (PIB). She said you have to enjoy what you did to be able to survive the long hours in firm. She told about different kind of lifestyles depend on the locations and size of the firms. Any firms outside New York will have better hours and larger firm like Goldman Saches, Morgan Stanley have more opportunities in choosing clients and deals She also talked about some useful courses which are helpful for entering level analyst, such as Statistics and Accounting.

Sophia then talked about equity research from both buy side and sell side. The focus of equity research in buy side and side are different. In buy side, every researcher needs to focus on 30-40 companies in once specific industry. On the other hand, sell side has early hours and in specific industry. The working hours for equity research are more flexible sometimes you can even work at home. Sophia emphasized the importance of the Liberal Arts education in writing and communication skills in the equity research.  Also, like the many other jobs in Finance, the ability to work with others and attention to details are very important as well.

Lingyi talks about sales and trading and fixed income.  Traders have the most stressful bur regular hours. The most convention path in sales and trading starts from floor calling. An inexperienced broker can call up to 400 people on a list a day follow experienced people.

Yiran talked about asset management. Generally, this  is a harder industry to enter with requirement of having assets to start with. Many portfolio managers have previous experience in various aspects of Finance industry.  The bet way to break in this industry is do start to work for the Marking and trust department.

Wendy talks about Private Clients service briefly. Their primary responsibilities are to remind their clients of all the potential risks in the market and to help them make the best decision in maximizing profits.

For next week, we will be visiting our portfolio and make some decision about make changes about our portfolio. If you like gambling , we hope to see you at our weekly meeting on Wednesday night Taylor G ay 9 pm