The Fall 2024 Stock Pitch Competition winners choose PayPal Holdings for Student Managed Investment Fund acquisition

As the fall 2024 semester comes to a close, students participating in the Portfolio Management course in the Department of Finance prepare pitch decks to sell their stock choices to the advisory board of the Student Managed Investment Fund (SMIF) during the biannual Stock Pitch Competition.  

This course was created in 2015 with initial seed funding from Fifth-Third Bank and was later grown to include a $2 million fund established by the Kresge Investment Office in 2018. The fund continues to regularly outperform the S&P 500 over its ten-year lifespan. 

The pitches were heard by advisory board members, including Professor Julie Hollinshead, instructor of the Portfolio Management course, Kresge investment team professionals and local investment industry executives. 

This year, the winning team consisted of Michael Saad, Reagan Paulina, Audrey Turner and Maxwell Ramirez, whose pitch to purchase shares in PayPal Holdings won over the advisory board members. 

Saad commented on the experience, saying that “This was one of my favorite classes that I’ve had at the Ilitch School because there are real world implications with the student managed investment fund.” 

Hollinshead was also pleased with the outcome of this year’s competition, stating that "the students did an excellent job finding new ideas in a challenging market in terms of valuation. I’m very proud of how they applied the knowledge gained in this class."

This course is offered at the graduate and undergraduate level in both the winter and fall, and anyone interested in trading real stocks while learning about the market is encouraged to enroll in FIN 5220 or FIN 7990.

The Wayne State University Mike Ilitch School of Business prepares students for challenging and rewarding careers, advances the boundaries of scholarly and practitioner knowledge, and enhances the economic vitality of the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan and beyond through its programs, research and community engagement. Established in 1946, the business school was renamed in 2015 in recognition of a $40 million gift from Mike and Marian Ilitch. Thanks to this lead investment, the school moved to a new state-of-the-art building in the heart of the District Detroit in 2018, and academic programming and collaboration with city businesses are expanding. For more information, visit ilitchbusiness.wayne.edu.