There is an adage that says, “Experience is the best teacher.” Experience is what the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School’s Student-Managed Investment Fund course aims to provide by allowing MBAs and finance students to manage real money in the real world. So far, the experience is paying off. Since the fund’s launch in 2023, the student-managed fund has consistently outperformed the Vanguard Total Stock Market index by several percentage points, which the students use as a benchmark for success.
The idea for the Student-Managed Investment Fund started with a gift from Hao Yu, a member of Carey Business School’s inaugural full-time MBA Class of 2012. In giving back to his alma mater, Yu wanted to create an experiential learning opportunity for students pursuing finance. His donation was the initial seed money for creating a $300,000 investment fund.
“Experiential learning is a very important tool for Carey students, and this fund will really add a lot of value to students in that capacity. It will showcase to potential employers that not only are we smart on paper, but we can show you how smart we are with actual results,” Yu says in a 2022 Giving profile.
With the fund in place, Carey’s faculty created a single-credit per term course, offered year-round in which students meet to manage assets and make transaction decisions. The course is open to full-time MBA and MS Finance students, but students need to apply to be admitted and are selected by a faculty oversight committee. The funds are held by Northern Trust brokerage, which handles large institutional investors.
“It’s different from a traditional course in the sense that it basically is trying to bring many different aspects of managing real money together through experience,” says Senior Lecturer Xiaohua Hu, PhD, CFA, who leads the Student-Managed Investment Fund course. “They get to learn, and they basically get a chance to be job-ready on day one after they graduate.”
Michelle Nezianya, Bus ’24 (MBA), served as risk manager for the course. Before beginning her studies, she worked in investments for one of the largest commercial banks in Nigeria. As a risk manager, she and her team reviewed recommendations made by the investments team. They also reviewed the impact on the portfolio, the correlation with other assets, and other economic aspects. In addition to the risk team review, safeguards are in place to ensure trades can only be made by agreement and approval of the investment fund members.
“What I really enjoy most is getting that practical hands-on experience, especially as I eventually plan to invest for myself,” says Nezianya, who plans to join Amazon as a finance manager. “I think my experience would kind of mirror the experience of most of the people in the class. We find it’s really valuable that we can actually practice some of the things that we’ve learned.”
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Topics: Alumni, Faculty and Staff, Students, Carey Business School, Support Scholars