The Marshal L. Salant Student Investment team is a group of 14 students that manages a portfolio totaling over $200,000, from which a percentage of profits are used for need-based scholarships given to students at the Whiting School of Engineering and the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
The team was founded in the fall of 2000 when alumnus Marshal L. Salant, who graduated from the Whiting School of Engineering in 1980, donated $100,000 to Johns Hopkins over the course of five years in $20,000 installments. Salant wanted to provide undergraduates with a way to invest money in a legitimate setting.
Participation in the Salant Investment Team is extended to students of the School of Engineering and that of the Arts and Sciences.
Candidates of all classes are evaluated by course background, work experience and also merit.
Though the group has an advisory board made up of Annette Leps, Senior Lecturer of the Center for Leadership Education, Greg Duffee, Professor of Economics and James Steinbugl, Investment Officer in the Office of Investment Management, and an administrative coordinator, Pam Arrington, students are given a great degree of freedom when choosing stocks.
“The administration takes a hand-off approach, allowing us to manage the portfolio with a lot of responsibility, which is a huge learning experience,” Senior Investment Analyst for the Salant team Simon Osipov wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “We often reach out to alumni for mentoring and advice.”
Junior Dana Berlin, Head of Training and Recruitment for the Salant Investment Team and in her second year of membership, spoke of the recent investment strategy the group has been considering.
“Right now we hold Google stock that’s overvalued, priced at around 800 a share,” she shared. “We are about to sell the Google stock because in order for it to maintain value, it would have to grow faster than its 15-20 percent growth rate.”
Members of the team are given full freedom when deciding which stocks to pitch.
“We typically do one stock pitch every meeting. There is a qualitative analysis of the company based on the industry, management, operations, etc. and a quantitative analysis based on discounted cash flows (basically projected profitability of the businesses) and comparable ratio analysis with peer companies,” Osipov wrote. “We sometimes also discuss trends in different sectors and the macro economy.
The valuable learning experience described by students of the team comes from the careful analysis each participant is spurred to complete due to the actual money at stake.
“Typically, we use a top-down or bottom-up approach,” Osipov wrote. “Top-down: a member thinks a sector is going to hit a home run, so s/he finds the best company within it. Bottom-up: a member may read about what a particular company is doing that is making headlines and if this is a material event, s/he may decide it is worth investigating.”
Not only do students on the Salant team generate real gains for themselves, their profits enable fellow undergraduate students to receive financial aid.
“We make an $8,000 contribution each semester toward need-based scholarships,” Berlin said.
Since Salant’s original donation of $100,000, members of the investment team have grown the portfolio by more than 100 percent, continuing to develop their proficiencies in the field of financial services and providing those in need with scholarship funds.
Students who hold positions on the team meet bi-weekly to discuss potential investment changes and pitch new stocks to each other. One is open to the public, and the other is private — used to discuss Salant operations and plans for the future.
This past weekend, the group reviewed 55 applications it received from students looking to fill positions that will become vacant at the end of this semester.
Students applying to the team are required to submit a resume, unofficial transcript, and a cover letting detailing their interest in the economic field.
A smaller number of applicants are then selected to be interviewed in the end of February, meeting with the Salant team’s advisory board and the leading members of the team.
