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Students one step away from world sharemarket competition

A team of Massey finance students has won a national competition predicting share value of an NZX-listed company to within one cent of the closing price.Katie Brown, Alex Gurr, Tim Kirkpatrick, Jordan Taylor and Annie Zhang won the Chartered Financial Ana

Kristina Koveshnikova
Wed, 11 Jul 2018

A team of Massey finance students has won a national competition predicting share value of an NZX-listed company to within one cent of the closing price.

Katie Brown, Alex Gurr, Tim Kirkpatrick, Jordan Taylor and Annie Zhang won the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute Global Investment Research Challenge on Tuesday.

The challenge involved researching, analysing and reporting on NZX-listed carpet company Cavalier Corporation as if they were practicing analysts and presenting a sell-side stock report to a panel of top fund managers.

In the “real life” analysis competition they predicted share value of the carpet giant to within one cent of Tuesday’s closing price beating teams from five other universities: Victoria, AUT, Otago, Auckland and Canterbury.

Team member Ms Zhang, a finance PhD student at the University, said they recommended a buy strategy to the judges based on a valuation of $3.20.

“We recommended Cavalier with a target price of $3.20, from $2.64 at the start of the competition, Ms Zhang said, who immigrated to New Zealand from China when she was five years old.

“When we were presenting, it was at $3.19 – one cent short of our recommended price.”

The annual competition has been running for four years globally with more than 200 universities fiercely competing in the stockmarket challenge.

Hopefuls have to go through three stages – national, regional and world competitions – before taking the world title.

New Zealand winners will now compete for the Asia-Pacific title in Bali in February, which is only one step away from the world challenge.

The last phase of the competition will be held in April in Omaha, Nebraska and only world’s four top finance student groups will take part in it.

“We are extremely hopeful that we can bring gold back to New Zealand, said Ms Zhang.

“We’ve formed a very strong team – we all come from different backgrounds and we’ve all got the key attributes to make it to the final round.”

Students are given one specific company to study and analyse for the entire challenge, which means the five Massey students have to take Cavalier Corporation all the way to the top.

“It will be quite ironic that the Kiwis present something about wool, carpet and sheep,” said Ms Zhang.
The team was mentored by Matthew Goodson, of BT Fund Management and Associate Professor Russell Gregory-Allen, a lecturer in the School of Economics and Finance on the Albany campus.

Dr Gregory-Allen said the team worked extremely hard, putting in up to 200 hours each, and were well prepared for questions.

“What they have learned you simply cannot learn from a text book.

“This win is significant for their job prospects in New Zealand but if they go all the way then it will open doors to the top jobs in the world.”

Mr Gurr and Mr Taylor are both third-year students, while Mr Kirkpatrick is a fourth year honours student and Ms Brown is completing her masters.

The judges included Paul Richardson of BT Funds, Guy Elliffe of AMP Capital Investors and Mark Brighouse of Brook Asset Management.
 

Kristina Koveshnikova
Wed, 11 Jul 2018
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Students one step away from world sharemarket competition
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