SMIF was founded by a group of students with a passion for investing and trading, and a desire to connect similar minded students at UWA. Now two years on, with many fresh faces on the committee, and many of the original committee transitioning on, it is an exciting time for SMIF! But first, lets check out what’s been happening this semester.
We began with bold plans, and the start of the semester marked an exciting time. Despite having committee members all over the world and in different parts of the country over the holidays, we were still able to coordinate our event plan, and reach out to new sponsors (notably, Oanda, AtlasTrend & Deutsche Bank). More information on our sponsors here; (uwasmif.com).
Our first main event of the calendar was our ever popular Introduction to Trading workshop, this time held in a larger venue to cope with capacity, hosting an estimated 300 students. Building on feedback from previous years, our ever improving flagship presentation featured members of our investment team, and Rob Huth (CFA), the research director of Viburnum Funds, about what we look for in an equity investment.
Other events throughout the semester included our inaugural competition run with AtlasTrend and our Introduction to Funds Management Series (featuring Morgan Stanley, Resource Capital Funds, and Euroz). We also ran a collaborative Alumni Speaker event, featuring Chris Bingemann (BAML Director, Perth) and his experience in New York during the GFC and merger of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch.
But what you’re probably interested in is our fund performance. This semester has seen us take on multiple new positions to our portfolio, with the most recent being Ainsworth Gaming Technology (ASX:AGI). This semester we have also added to our portfolio Bulletproof Limited (ASX:BPF), and expect to take on Infomedia (ASX:IFM), once the price aligns more closely with our valuation. Our best performing stock is still Altium Limited (ASX:ALU), up a massive 37.89% at the time this was written. Currently, our worst performer in the portfolio is Big Air Group (ASX:BGL), showing returns of -21.15%, however all our other positions have made a gain.
This brings our portfolio to a total of 5 positions, and having a total return of 7.62%, including the cash holdings which are reducing our performance figures slightly.
And that wraps up semester 1 for 2016!
LiKai Tan