The University of West Florida’s student-managed Argo Bond Fund won first place among the nation’s student-managed bond funds at the Quinnipiac University Global Asset Management Education’s (Q.G.A.M.E.) annual conference global portfolio competition in New York City last week.
In its first year of competition, UWF’s Argo Bond Fund outperformed submitted portfolios from different student-managed fund programs across the nation. In its 13th year, the Q.G.A.M.E. global portfolio performance competition ranks the realized returns from all qualified student-managed fund submissions which are required to have a live performance history on real capital of at least one year.
“Obviously, 2022 has been an extremely difficult year for any global bond investors,” said Dr. K.C. Ma, Mary Ball Washington/Switzer Bros endowed professor of finance in UWF’s College of Business. “It is especially encouraging to the Argo students that, for its first entry, Argo Bond Fund can beat all other student funds by outperforming the benchmark by 20%.”
The winning Argo Bond Fund portfolio, managed by the Argo Investments Program Class of 2022 and led by students Tuynh Minh Trung, Sam Vaughn, Fernando Gomez and Nick Osting, has $1 million in assets under management.
The program, established in 2019, gives College of Business students real-world experience in funds management. In 2020, the UWF Foundation Board approved the use of real money for the program’s students to manage its funds.
Dan Lucas, Foundation chief financial officer, said students are given benchmarks and report performance quarterly to the investment committee as any other fund manager does. “It is exceptional to have this win given the current volatility in the financial markets with unprecedented Federal Reserve interest rate hikes.”
The GAME XII conference, held annually each spring, gathers over 100 of the most successful financial experts together to share their knowledge, expertise and outlook for the future with 1,100 graduate and undergraduate students and faculty from 120 universities around the globe.
