Stuart Team Puts Up Winning Numbers in CFA Institute Research Challenge

When it comes to valuing a company’s stock, a student team from Stuart School of Business is the top pick among Chicago-area universities.

For the seventh time in the last eight years, the Illinois Tech team has out-paced its rivals to earn first place in the Chicago local round of the 2019 CFA Institute Research Challenge. The annual competition, sponsored locally by CFA Society Chicago, gives students valuable mentoring and training in financial analysis.

With its win, the Stuart team has earned a trip to the Americas regional competition in New York on April 23–24 and will have a shot at making it into the global finals of the prestigious contest on April 25.  Last year a total of approximately 5,500 students from more than 1,100 institutions in 87 countries participated in local-level competitions of the CFA Institute Research Challenge.

Chicago-area competitors in 2019 included teams from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and Loyola University Chicago, among others.

The Stuart team includes five students in the Master of Science in Finance program: Trishala Shetty, Ajinkya Shrikhande, Surbhi Singh, Surabhi Sutaria, and Aiman Moizuddin, who is also in a co-terminal B.S. in Business Administration program. The team’s advisor is Senior Lecturer of Finance Michael Rybak.

The challenge is designed to hone students’ skills as equity research analysts by testing their ability to value a stock, write a research report, and present their recommendations. Working in teams, participants use publicly available sources to conduct in-depth research on a single company and prepare a comprehensive equity research report. Baxter International was the company selected for this year’s Chicago local competition.

Expert investment professionals, all charterholder members of CFA Society Chicago, judge each team on the thoroughness of its analysis and the depth of its knowledge about the company, as demonstrated in the written report and the students’ presentation of their analysis and recommendations.

Founded in 1925, CFA Society Chicago has more than 4,700 members and is the world’s oldest investment analysts’ society.