A team of five Northeastern students, three of which are from D'Amore-McKim, recently won the Southeastern Hedge Fund Competition hosted by Georgia State University in Atlanta on April 27th. Members of the team include: Alex DiCarlo (Khoury/DMSB'23), Vedant Bhagat, (Khoury/DMSB'24), Michael Ford (Khoury/COS '24), Conor Doyle (Khoury/DMSB '25), and Pranav Olety (Khoury/CSSH '23).
The Southeastern Hedge Fund Competition is a large annual international case competition where more than 100 universities around the world compete for a cash prize of $10,000. Teams submit hedge fund strategy proposals that are then judged by a panel of investment professionals who determine the winner.
This was a unique cross-disciplinary experiential learning opportunity where the computer science and finance disciplines converged. The Northeastern team's winning pitch idea,called “Clicks for Cash,” is an active investment strategy based on measuring the web traffic associated with public companies in the consumer discretionary sector. One key innovation of this strategy is the creation of a comprehensive mapping table that measures traffic on the many subsidiary and affiliated websites operated by a parent company.
Professors Joe Marks and Richard Herron advised the team to victory. Marks says, “For me, working with this team was one of the highlights of this academic year. These students applied their skills and creativity to design and measure something far beyond what I expected from undergraduates. I was truly amazed to read the first draft of their submission.”
Equally proud, Herron says the significance of the interdisciplinary nature of this particular team was special. “These five students always found solutions to complex problems in computer science and finance. Their ability to win first prize on their first showing is a testament to their ability, curiosity, and hard work, plus Northeastern's co-op education model and combined majors.”
Herron says he is already counting the days until next year's competition.
