COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA237.4
This course is dual-listed with the Full-Time MBA Program
COURSE TITLE: Haas Investment Fund
UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 units (2 units for spring semester plus 1
unit for fall semester)
INSTRUCTORS: Christine Parlour and Bill Rindfuss
E-MAIL ADDRESSES: parlour@haas.berkeley.edu;
rindfuss@haas.berkeley.edu
COURSE WEB PAGE LOCATION: http://bspace.berkeley.edu
MEETING DAY(S)/TIME:
PREREQUISITE(S): MBA/EWMBA233 Investments is strongly
recommended to be taken concurrently. (The program offices have agreed that FT
MBAs enrolled in this course will be permitted to enroll in the EWMBA section
of the Investments course, subject to availability following EWMBA
registration.)
CLASS FORMAT: Exercises, outside training, team discussions,
team meetings with instructors, and a team presentation/pitch one afternoon
(likely outside scheduled class time) in SF Financial District.
REQUIRED READINGS: No set readings; however, research by
teams on areas contemplated by investment strategies will be necessary, and
readings in Investments course will be highly valuable.
BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Mixture of team performance in
developing and testing investment strategies, pitching to judges, execution of
strategy, and quality of final report.
ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: The Haas
Investment Fund (aka Haas Hedge Fund) is a full-year BILD experiential learning
course that is open to both FT and EW MBA students, and is subject to an
application and selection process. You'll have the opportunity to apply skills
developed in finance and other courses to active portfolio management, using an
actual, dedicated investment fund. The course is team-project based, with teams
of approximately five students developing, pitching and executing their
investment strategies. These do not have to be "quant" trading
strategies -- just good ideas. The goal is for each team to use past experience
and unique expertise to innovate and identify an "alpha" and then to
trade on it. Specialized knowledge that may appear to have nothing to do with
"finance" can often be used to identify a market inefficiency or mispriced
risk. So bring your full experience to this course!
There are five steps to successfully completing this course:
- Devise an investment strategy,
- Evaluate it through rigorous back-testing,
- Present the team's proposed strategy to an outside board,
- Trade using capital allocated based on those
presentations, and
- Evaluate performance in a final report.
This course is a year-long commitment: You must be enrolled
for BOTH the spring '13 and fall '13 terms, plus you'll be monitoring
investments over the summer. The timeline is:
- Jan to May: Develop skills (training on research and
portfolio analytics platforms at Haas) and a strategy (with a focus on
INNOVATION
- the only restrictions relate to size of the fund and
transaction costs).
- May: Present to a board drawn from the
trading/investment/hedge fund community in the Bay Area (for example one board
member this past year is a former Chief Investment Officer for Blackrock).
- June-December: Trade!
The initial several training sessions will be during the
scheduled class time. Timing of subsequent team meetings and meetings with
instructors will be during the scheduled class time through spring semester or
may be flexible based on teams' schedules.
Here is a blog post with further background:
www.haasachieves.wordpress.com/2012/05//17/investment-fund-students-pitch
strategies-to-distinguished-judges/
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES:
Christine Parlour is a Professor in the Haas Finance Group
and her research focuses on liquidity and trading strategies in financial
markets. In addition to the Haas Investment Fund course, she regularly teaches
the Investments course in the FT and/or EW MBA programs. She had been a Visiting
Economist at the SEC. Her academic work has appeared in various scholarly
journals such as the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies and
the American Economic Review. She is an associate editor at several finance
journals including the Journal of Finance and the Review of Finance.
Bill Rindfuss is a Professional Faculty member and also Executive Director for Strategic Programs in the Haas Finance Group. In addition to the Haas Investment Fund course, he teaches, develops and brings outside speakers for a series of applied finance training classes in partnership with the Career Management Group and MBA Finance Club. He represents the Finance Group also with respect to MBA Admissions and Alumni Relations. He had formerly worked at JPMorgan and predecessors in New York and San Francisco in several finance roles over twenty years. He has an MBA in finance and management from Columbia Business School, and a BA in mathematics and economics from Colgate.