The University of West Florida’s student-managed Argo Bond Fund placed second among the nation’s student-managed bond funds at the Quinnipiac University Global Asset Management Education’s (QGAME) Global Portfolio Competition held on March 20-21 in New York City. More than 150 universities and 1,400 students participated in the competition.
The QGAME 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.
“This is the second time that UWF entered the competition,” said Dr. K.C. Ma, Mary Ball Washington/Switzer Bros endowed professor of finance in UWF’s Lewis Bear Jr. College of Business. “We won the First Place award last year in the fixed-income category. The investment strategies have been very successful. I’m extremely proud of the students.”
The winning Argo Bond Fund portfolio, managed by the Argo Investments Program Class of 2023 and led by students Aaron Korel and Nicolas Mielke, has $1 million in assets under management. Funds only qualify for the competition if they are real-money funds managed by the students through university courses.
The Argo Bond Fund program, established in 2019, gives 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.
The Quinnipiac University GAME conference, held annually each spring, brings together financial experts to share their knowledge, expertise, and outlook for the future with graduate and undergraduate students and faculty from universities around the globe.
For more information about UWF’s Lewis Bear Jr. College of Business, visit uwf.edu/cob.
