CMCnotes

Greetings Capital Management Club (CMC) alumni. The coronavirus pandemic, UW's move to remote learning, and incredibly volatile markets presented unique challenges to members during the 2019-2020 academic year. By moving regular meetings and training sessions online with Zoom, the executive board maintained the momentum built in the Fall semester and the club ended the year with a record number of Portfolio Analysts. The Capital Management Club News & Notes (volume 2) below highlights club activities during the year.

We recorded the slides for the investment thesis and valuation training session so you can watch in advance of the meeting on Tuesday. You can watch the presentation here – slides used are attached. There are additional valuation readings in the Research Readings folder on the website here.

Tuesday night we’ll start with a high-level discussion of key concepts and any questions you have. Then, two portfolio analysts will demonstrate stock pitches to give you a clear understanding of what we’re looking for at the Associate Member Pitch Day on April 21^st. As a reminder, the current teams are here.

A video of the latest training session is here and slides are attached.

During the session we reviewed where you can find information in Fqactset and elsewhere to help you understand how a company operates and evaluate the comeptitive landscape and trends in company financial reports.

We then discussed techniques professionals use to efficiently research companies effectively filtering through the noise to identify key drivers of the stocks.

We also discussed how examining the distribution of expectations for the key drivers can supplement our research and help more clearly define the key tension points for a stock, i.e. the issues where bulls and bears disagree. By focusing our analysis and field research on these tension points, we can position ourselves to develop a view on the stock, effectively aligning with the optimistic or pessimistic case for the stock.

Finally, we discussed how our views are translated into financial forecasts that are, relative to consensus forecasts, directionally consistent with how we expect the tension points to resolve.  

To supplement your own research, we created folders here for each of the stock teams containing recent Wall Street research notes and at least one detailed financial models. These should help you estimate market expectations, at least as reflected in sell-side views. There is also a template you can use to start to put together your presentations for the April 21 Associate Member Pitch Day. Zoom, Microsoft-Teams, or Googlehangouts are relatively easy apps you can use to connect and work on the presentations together.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to Dan or the Portfolio Analyst working with your team if you have any questions.

I hope you are able to join us tomorrow night for the training session covering stock analysis and forecasting - the slides are attached. The zoom link to connect at 5:45 is here. 

Last session, we discussed Accounting and Company Analysis and covered how you can access and analyze information to understand how companies work operationally and how the competitive nature of the industry in which they operate influences how they perform financially. 

We will briefly review that material and then transition to thinking about the stocks of the company we are analyzing including identifying key stock drivers. This is a technique professional analysts use to more efficiently filter the plethora of information available to identify signals that can help make good investment decisions. We will also discuss how to estimate market expectations for the drivers that might be discounted in the current market price as well as how to develop forecasts for how the drivers will affect the companies and the stock valuation prospectively.

One additional item we’ll discuss is the Associate Member Pitch Day schedule for April 21^st. The current teams are here. I think zoom might be an efficient way for teams to connect to discuss their ideas and work on their pitch. Some of you may already have accounts, but if not, you can register for a free account here.

I hope you are all doing ok. Obviously, there is a lot going on with the coronavirus and it may seem insensitive to talk about investing during a global pandemic, but you should understand that if you choose a career investing, you will be required to make decisions in times of great uncertainty. Having an investment process is essential to making good decisions and especially so in times like these.