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It’s that time of year… election season. With the end of the semester in sight and the weather finally tolerable, it is time to start the process of passing the torch. Elections will be held on March 22nd during our normal meeting. Below is a description of each position. Candidates may run for multiple positions and will address why they are running and what qualifications they have for all of the positions they are running for in one speech. We’d like to keep speeches to around 2 minutes per person so that we have ample time to hear from everyone, discuss and vote.

President:
The president is responsible for overseeing all club activities and liaising between the college, the executive board, and the general meetings. The president coordinates all special events (trips, lectures, workshops, panels) and works closely with the other board members to support them in their roles and ensure that things are getting done.

Portfolio Manager:
The portfolio manager is responsible for executing trades, overseeing all portfolio activity, and advising the club on possible stock suggestions. She must follow the market and keep members up to date on major market and portfolio movement in whatever way she sees fit (newsletter, verbal, blog posts, a combination, etc.). The portfolio manager should be familiar with how trading works and feel comfortable researching investment opportunities. She will run several meetings throughout the semester.

Bank Treasurer:
The treasurer is responsible for all OIG non-money market cash. She must keep record of all expenses in an excel spreadsheet and work with administrator Mary Cataldi to get funds needed for club donations and for OIG itself. It is the treasurer’s job to ensure that clubs who are awarded money during club donations do receive their payments. The treasurer oversees all transaction activity.

Publicity Chair:
The publicity chair is responsible for publicizing the club and overseeing club recruitment. She will also coordinate club donations and send weekly reminder e-mails to club members and the general BMC community (through activities e-mails) to advertise for and provide information on special events and regular meetings.

Secretary:
The secretary is responsible for reserving meeting rooms (and rooms for special events). It is her job to take minutes at general and board meetings and distribute these to the appropriate groups. She is also responsible for keeping the blog up to date.

Welcome back from break! We had an excel workshop (using excel for business and finance needs) with BMC Econ Professor Stahnke. Contact Lilly or Yufan for a list of helpful excel shortcuts.

Finally it’s the spring round of OIG’s Club Gift Donation meeting! There’re countless ways we can give back to Bryn Mawr, and OIG gives back to the college in the form of club funding, supporting clubs and individuals on campus to implement their special events! OIG has become particularly popular this year, thus received a number of amazing applications!

Here’s a list of clubs or individuals who came to OIG’s meeting to present their ideas:
1.Mawrter Entertainment
2.Bi-co KSA (Korean Student Association)
3.BioVision Conference 2010
4.The Jewish Student Union
5.PEIA (Project Education in Africa)

Although each presentation was kept under 5 minutes, we were all very impressed by these innovative ideas that would help enrich our experience at Bryn Mawr. At the end of the meeting, members of OIG had a lively discussion, and voted on how much we shall allocate to each club.

Come by on March 15th as we’ll be having our General Meeting, featuring Professor Stahnke teaching us some tricks to play around in Excel!! If time permits, we’ll look into our portfolio.

This is the last meeting before spring break, YAY, let’s count down!!

At today’s meeting we did the following:

Sophia gave a wonderful and concise presentation on Ford, in which she is currently invested, yes with her own REAL money, props to Sophia!

We introduced potential investment opportunities, all stocks of course!
1.) MercadoLibre (international LATIN AMERICA)
hosts an online platform in Latin America, called MercadoLibre and located at www.mercadolibre.com. The Company has e-commerce operations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. In addition, it also operates online trading platforms in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Panama.

2.)Companhia Energetica de Minas Gerais (BRIC)
is a Brazil-based company involved in the energy sector. It is mainly engaged in the generation, transmission and distribution of electric energy for industrial, residential, commercial and rural consumption.

3.)Kraft Foods Inc.
Is engaged in manufacturing and marketing packaged food products, including snacks, beverages, cheese, convenient meals and various packaged grocery products. During the year ended December 31, 2008, the Company have operations in more than 70 countries and sell the products in approximately 150 countries.

4.)China Education Alliance, Inc. (BRIC)
Is an education service company that provides online education and onsite training in China. The Company’s principal business is the distribution of educational resources through the Internet.

5.)CICI Bank Limited (BRIC)
Anna gave a wonderfully insightful presentation at one of our recent meetings, this has also been her highest grossing stock.

We voted on buying all of these stocks, 10,000 dollars worth, investing 70% in the growth stocks–China Education Alliance, MercadoLibre, and Companhia Energetica de Minas Gerais–and the remaining 30% in Kraft and CICI bank limited.

We also voted to sell CREE, making a profit of $ 1000 , which will be reinvested in our new batch of equity!

Come by next week for Club Donations, and help OIG give back to the Bryn Mawr community !

At today’s meeting we did the following:

Checked in on our stock simulation! Remember to CHECK ON IT if you want to win!

How to analyze a stock, i.e. how to read an article and pick out the relevant info

1.) Cisco systems – look at the graph, news/events relating to the company, company profile, how to break down all of the numbers.  Here are a couple of terms to keep in mind while considering a stock:

market capitalization = shares outstanding * price/share

beta = comparason with S&P 500, if a company “has beta”, then you have outperformed the S&P (used in a 3 year period)

EPS = revenues/shares outstanding

EPS growth = long-term projection of the company’s health

Question posed: Should we consider selling some of our stocks that have taken more than a 60% loss?

Answer: Nathalie says that we should weather the storm.  The stocks we own that have underperformed have been around for a while and if there were ever a threat of bankruptcy, she is confident that the government would bail them out.

Lastly, we went through our stocks.  Good news: 20% return on EROC and 30% return on CREE! Whoo!

Come by next week when we will be voting to make more stock purchases!

During tonight’s meeting, we looked at our portfolio (which was down quite a bit… however keep in mind the markets have been VERY volatile –> the Dow fell below 10,000 points today for the first time in 3 months).

Let’s each do research on the stocks we are investing in! Each person should take on at least one of our stocks and research it, look up how it’s doing relative to its competitors, industry news, etc. and bring any info you find to our meetings! *Please see the ‘PORTFOLIO’ section of this blog to see which stocks we are currently investing in! Then, utilize google, as well as any of the websites listed under the ‘LINKS’ tab, as tools to research stocks we are currently investing in… as well as other new ones of course!

**Some stocks we are particularly interested in and looked at this past meeting: Eagle Rock Energy Partners (EROC), Nokia, as well as Infosys (in India) and China Mobile Limited (in China)… lets see if we can gather some more research for our next meeting so that we can further explore our options! (shall we buy? shall we sell? shall we hold?)

KEEPING OUR MAIN GOAL IN MIND: Diversification of Portfolio

-we’re mostly investing in larger companies, but we would like to start looking towards smaller to mid-cap companies to invest in.

-investing in other countries (such as BRIC -Brazil, Russia, India, China**, and other developing countries)

–various industries (right now, we are very focused on technology… I suggest we start looking more into Clean Tech and Energy..)

*Not sure how to decide which stocks to invest in? Nathalie will be presenting how to dissect an article on a stock, and how to act upon it!

IMPORTANT DATES:

**Club Donations –  MARCH 1ST (week before spring break)!

**Elections coming up – 2 weeks after Spring Break!

The lovely ladies of OIG participated in the FANTASY STOCKS LEAGUE, launch to OIG’s portfolio management competition for the semester! Each lady trader’s portfolio consists of $100,000; it is her responsibility to pick stocks (either at random, or based on one of the several valuation techniques**, or based upon qualitative analysis –which is what we most commonly used in OIG, where we analyze the current events of the economy and use that as a guide to predict which industries/companies are expected to rise and fall; be sure to keep updated on any recent blog posts in regards to the markets, as they are constantly changing each day!)

**If any one is interested in learning any of the valuation techniques, please feel free to shoot me an email (lamirhekma@brynmawr.edu), and I’d be more than happy to sit down with you and explain to you the different ways that financial analysts use to value a stock/company!

Synopsis of recent events:

-Cree, Inc. And Arrow Electronics, Inc. Signs Distribution Agreement To Serve Global Adoption Of Silicon Carbide-Based Power Electronics…expanding Cree product offerings to now include power products.  (Nov 21)

-Cree, Inc. Issues Q3 2010 Guidance Above Analysts’ Estimates…fiscal 2nd quarter profits tripled results

http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/keyDevelopments?rpc=66&symbol=CREE.O&timestamp=20080824233600

WOW.. this past week’s markets were INSANE!!

For those of you who read my previous post from Wednesday about how all is looking good for the technology sector, as anticipation of Apple’s new iPad spurred a rise in shares, ultimately lifting Nasdaq by about 2 percent…well perhaps I spoke too soon…

“Apple reported stellar earnings on Monday. It received upgrades from analysts on Tuesday; Goldman Sachs issued a price target of $230; Deutsche Bank set a target of $250; Barclays expects a $265 price; and Credit Suisse raised its target to $275.

From its Monday opening of $202, Apple surged in the next three days on its earnings and in anticipation of the iPad, trading as high as $213 on Tuesday and $209 on Wednesday before erasing the gains [Thursday].”  http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20100128/nasdaq-plunges-as-tech-stocks-drop-on-earnings-and-lower-orders.htm

Apple dropped even further on Friday, with the markets closing at a share price of $192.06; down roughly 4%. (Google finance)

**Why the sudden drop???

According to an article in Friday’s WSJ, “the tech sector’s drop came as investors registered their disappointment with Apple’s iPad a day after the company unveiled the highly anticipated tablet device. Traders said there was too much hype ahead of the release and that the product doesn’t appear to be as much of a “game-changer” as investors has hoped. Shares fell $8.59, or 4.1%, to $199.29.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704194504575031640794027322.html?mod=WSJ_Stocks_LEFTTopNews 

 but on the upside… (and only to confuse you more, of course)… read Thursday’s article from the Int’l Business Times: “Wall Street calls iPad a ‘Grand Slam'” http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20100128/wall-street-calls-ipadgrand-slam.htm

 

Hmm.. I guess we will just have to see what’s in store for us in the next couple of hours, when the markets open at 6 AM… stay tuned OIG! 🙂

Welcome Back OIG!!

Our first meeting of the spring 2010 semester (held on Jan 25, 2010) went Great!! It was so wonderful to see everyone and to hear  that everyone had a wonderful and relaxing break! Now we’re back and ready to get to business! 🙂

A few updates, for those who weren’t at the meeting (we missed you! but no worries, come join us next week!):

**OIG has relocated to a cooler, hipper, more exciting hot spot (or shall I say trading floor -seeing as that’s what we’ll be doing next week!): TAYLOR HALL, SECOND FLOOR, 1ST ROOM ON THE RIGHT! 0

**Next week = FANTASY STOCK LEAGUE! Join us as we will each be creating our own simulated stock portfolio! **This is a great opportunity to learn the basics of managing an investment portfolio and an inside look into the wonderful world of Trading!

**Spring semester field trip, somewhere in Philadelphia!! We welcome and encourage any and all ideas of places you’d be interested in going, seeing, learning more about, etc..

-Some options/ideas we’ve thought upon thus far: *a trip to Wharton, perhaps to speak with a professor/expert in the field of Finance.. *a trip to a private equity firm, hedge fund, Susquehanna prop trading firm, etc. Have an idea? Let us know!!

**We also took a look at our portfolio, which is doing quite well ladies! Woot! *In the last 6 months (and in fact, the last 2 years even), OIG has beat the S&P by a whopping 11% !!! That’s incredible. Total Warren Buffett status :).

-We are looking to update our portfolio, and buy/sell new stocks ! So, be sure to keep updated on the current state of the economy, what’s hot to buy, what’s not, which industries we should invest in, etc, etc.! A lot is going on in the news, this week especially (Obama’s State of the Union, annual earnings reports due, a lot of pertinent info coming out Friday, etc — so be alert and aware, as now’s the time when we can easily win or lose money, depending on whether or not we pay attention to whats going on)!

**We should start looking towards trading commodities (natural resources such as gold, oil), particularly known as the wise thing to invest in during bad market times.

**News in the housing market: Stocks weakened Wednesday following the release of data showing an unexpected drop in sales of new homes (11% decline in mortgage applications, despite extremely low interest rates). http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100127-710266.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

**On a more exciting note: Apple presents the new iPad tablet! Shares of Apple stock rose 2.9% in anticipation of the announcement, lifting Nasdaq up by nearly 1 percent (.8 percent) (..say goodbye to paper..and say hello to an increase in profit for OIG!)

**Thoughts on what to do with CREE?? To sell or to hold?

-News from Jan 19: Cree’s fiscal second-quarter profit tripled as the semiconductor and light-emitting-diode company continued to benefit from surging demand for LEDs. http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100119-713763.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

-Most recent news: The HB LED market will be strongly affected by demand from the LCD backlight market, and this demand will create shortages of both LEDs as well as their manufacturing equipment that will continue well into 2013. http://www.edn.com/blog/1470000147/post/880052288.html

**For those of you watched Obama’s State of the Union tonight… can anyone guess the one thing he repeated most during his speech?? that’s right folks… CLEAN ENERGY!!!!!

GOOD NEWS UPDATE!  *U.S. stocks rose on Wednesday after the U.S. Federal Reserve said it will keep interest rates near zero! http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2719486720100127

**A quite interesting tie together: a news article discussing Apple’s plans to create a solar-powered ipod!  http://www.edn.com/blog/1470000147/post/420052242.html

**Another interesting find: Google has applied to become an electricity marketer, which gives the search company the authority to buy and sell bulk power at market prices. http://www.edn.com/blog/1470000147/post/530051853.html

It’s been quite a tumultuous week on both Wall Street and the Main Street…I’m curious to hear your opinions on the recent events of the economy. For one, where do you see the future of our economy/markets, in the next 6 months or so? Which industries do you think will prove to be successful? Keep updated ladies, and keep researching for new stocks! We look forward to hearing your opinions and ideas! Feel free to comment on the blog, email us, or bring your ideas/stocks/suggestions to meetings! We always love to hear what you have to say 🙂