COURSE
NUMBER: MBA237.4
This
course is dual-listed with the EWMBA Program
COURSE
TITLE: Haas Investment Fund
UNITS
OF CREDIT: 1 unit (This course is part of a two-semester series)
INSTRUCTOR:
Bill Rindfuss
E-MAIL
ADDRESSES: rindfuss@haas.berkeley.edu
COURSE
WEB PAGE LOCATION: http://bspace.berkeley.edu
MEETING
DAY(S)/TIME:
PREREQUISITE(S): Enrollment in this course is by selection
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:
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.