UNC Student and Foundation Fund

UNC Student and Foundation Fund The “Student and Foundation Fund”, a real world investment class at the Monfort College of Business, is commonly referred to as “SAFF”.

SAFF provides students the opportunity to actively manage a portfolio of real assets comprised of an ever changing balance of equities, bonds, and cash reserves. The first class was allotted $200,000 by the UNC Foundation to oversee, when the program was established in 1992. After additional donations and sound management decisions over the years, the fund currently stands at just over $2.5 million.

04/06/2022

Today in SAFF class we had a guest speaker, as well as a pitch.

Kyle Foss is a SAFF alumnus and graduated from UNC in May 2018. Following graduation, he worked at a Cyber Security firm Cyber GRX in Denver. When Covid happened, he decided to leave the Cyber Security field and entered the Real Estate market. He then started a company called Pagosa, a Sales and Marketing firm that helps Lawyers connect with an increased number of potential clients. Kyle Foss spoke to the SAFF class about how he got to where he is today and gave us some helpful tips to help us in our futures.

Tomás Estrella pitched to purchase Tesla (TSLA). Tesla designs and manufactures electric vehicles and is led by CEO Elon Musk. Tomás proposed to invest $25,690.52 or 23 shares in the CIBEF account and $26,085.86 or 23 shares in the SAFF portfolio. His proposal would increase our discretionary sector by 2%, which would get us to our target allocation of 10%. The class voted unanimously to purchase this stock by selling stocks from our healthcare and technology sector.

We also worked on the newsletter and will beginning putting it together next week.

03/30/2022

Last night in SAFF class we had 4 pitches.

The first pitch was by Zheng Lin. He pitched to purchase Costco (COST), a membership only retail store. Zheng pitched to sell 1.79% of our Apple stock to purchase Costco which would help simultaneously lock in gains. We will be purchasing $2,713.52 of Costco in our CIBEF portfolio and $7,697.29 in SAFF.

Nanci Diego had the second pitch, she pitched CMS Energy Corp (CMS). We voted to purchase $4,832 in our CIBEF portfolio and $13,288 in our SAFF portfolio.

The third pitch of the night was by Halaki Gionet. She pitched to further expand our Communications sector by comparing the positives and negatives of both Fox and Paramount. We voted to purchase $15,000 worth of Fox in our CIBEF portfolio and $3,000 in our SAFF portfolio.

Cheyanne Smith pitched last. She pitched to buy Nexstar Media Group (NXST). We will only be purchasing Nexstar in our CIBEF portfolio and we will be purchasing $13,838 worth of NXST.

Since we are close to reaching our target allocations in each sector, the class spent a large amount of time discussing where we should lock in gains and if there's any securities we should sell. In order to purchase the 4 new securities in our CIBEF, we will be selling $10,000 of Intuitive Surgical, $13,000 of Anthem, and $6,500 of Apple. For our SAFF portfolio, we will be selling $9,000 of Intuitive Surgical and $11,000 of Anthem.

03/23/2022

Today we had our first SAFF class back since spring break. We used today as a day to update the class on everyone's individual Sectors and Asset Classes that they are in charge of. Each student presented relevant information on our holdings, any important news and any proposals to sell or buy more in each sector and asset class.

We also took class photos and individual headshots- so stay tuned to see those!

03/09/2022

Today the SAFF class had 2 pitches, worked on our Value at Risk analysis and started to divide up tasks for the Newsletter.

Wyatt Smith pitched iShares Basic Materials ETF (IYM). We will be investing in this ETF as it will expose us to the materials sector and focuses on clean and green emissions. He pitched to allocate 1% of our both our SAFF and CIBEF portfolios to this ETF, equaling approximately $7,000 in SAFF and $6,000 in CIBEF. The class unanimously voted to purchase this stock.

Gavin Spaur pitched second. He proposed to buy Raytheon Technologies (RTX). After some statistical analysis, the class voted to purchase RTX. The class voted to liquidate $17,638.77 of our holdings of DTE in the SAFF portfolio and $11,151.92 of our holdings of DTE in the CIBEF portfolio. We will be using the liquidated funds from our DTE stocks to purchase shares of RTX.

For the remainder of the class, we discussed our Value at Risk. We practiced calculating the holding period return for each stock to find the best performance day and the worst performance day. We also calculated the average return and the standard deviation to compare each stock.

As we have reached the midpoint of the semester, we have learned a lot and are looking forward to continuing investing and watching our holding’s performances throughout the rest of the semester.

03/02/2022

Today, the SAFF class had a long discussion on options and protective puts. Wyatt Smith also gave us a portfolio update since the beginning of Fall 2021 and the beginning of this semester. Since Fall 2021 our portfolio is down 5.1%, since the 1st of the year, our portfolio is down 8.26%.

We also had four pitches today:

Our first pitch was by Nicholas Sievert, he pitched for protective put strategy for four companies Anthem Inc (ANTM), Arrow Electronics (ARW), Walt Disney Company (DIS), T-Mobile (TMUS). The purpose of this strategy is to act like insurance for the portfolio. It keeps us from losing more money since the market is in a downtrend. We will spend $4,439.00 until the expiration on Thursday, April 14, 2022.

Our second pitch was by Nanci Diego. She pitched to buy Schneider Electric (SBGSY), the 3rd ranked electronic industry sector. She pitched to buy 622 shares or $19,760.94 in our SAFF portfolio and 511 shares or $16,234.47 in our CIBEF portfolio. Her goal was to bring us to our 8.4% allocation for our industrials sector. In order to pay for this, we will sell 166 shares of DTE in SAFF and 136 shares of DTE in CIBEF. The class voted unanimously to sell the shares of DTE energy and purchase SBGSY.

Our third pitch of the night was by Cheyanne Smith. Cheyanne pitched to buy Equinor ASA (EQNR), a company that explores and develops Norwegian continental shelf, develops energy projects and is based in Norway. She pitched to buy 638 shares or $21,487 in SAFF and buy 583 shares or $19,629 in CIBEF. She pitched to sell $21,487 of DTE in SAFF and $19,629 of DTE in CIBEF but since Nanci also pitched to sell DTE we decided to use some of our Cash to purchase this stock. The class voted unanimously to buy EQNR as well.

Our final pitch of the night was by Spencer Moreno. He pitched to purchase Palo Alto Networks (PANW), the industry's leader in Cybersecurity networks. He proposed to allocate 2.5% of our SAFF portfolio which is equal to $21,237 or 36 shares and 2.2% of our CIBEF portfolio equaling $19,629 or 34 shares. The class voted unanimously to purchase.

02/23/2022

Today the SAFF Class was fortunate enough to have a guest speaker, Warren Olsen spoke with our class about his experiences in the Finance industry, including being a CPA and the President of Morgan Stanley Investment Management Funds. Olsen currently serves as the CFO and a chairman on the board of Centrum Cibus Partners. His insight into how to manage money and his real-business world experiences were very astute.

Following our guest speaker, we had 3 stock proposals:

Zheng Lin had the first pitch to purchase shares of Alphabet INC (GOOGL). He proposed we purchase 2.1% in the SAFF fund and 2.4% of our allocation in the CIBEF fund. Zheng discussed how Alphabet Inc. is the parent company of several subsidiaries like Google Drive, Google Maps, and YouTube. In addition, Alphabet Inc. owns companies in healthcare, artificial intelligence and internet service sectors as well. Compared to its competitors, Alphabet Inc. has outperformed their competition significantly and looks to continue to grow. The class voted unanimously to purchase GOOGL.

The second pitch was done by Sophie Barker. She pitched to purchase SPDR Portfolio Short Term Corporate Bond ETF (SPSB), a fixed income stock that would help us re-balance our Fixed Income Allocations. SPSB is a weighted index of fixed-rate investment-grade US corporate bonds with 1 to 3 years remaining maturity. She chose to pitch this stock because of the low expense ratio, low volatility and its short duration. In order to purchase this stock, she pitched to liquidate approximately $27,000 in the SAFF fund and $19,000 in the CIBEF fund, and take the liquid funds and use those to purchase the BND ETF. The class voted unanimously to purchase SPSB.

The third and final pitch of the night was done by Andrew Klauber. He also pitched fixed income to help Sophie Barker further diversify and rebalance our Fixed Income allocations. He pitched a Laddering Strategy, this is beneficial because it allows the fund to continue to wait for interest rates to rise, improved liquidity and it provides a more competitive yield than BND, our current majority of Fixed Income. If a laddering strategy is used correctly; we will see around 2.5%-4% returns. He pitched to liquidate approximately $27,000 in the SAFF fund and $19,000 in the CIBEF fund and use the liquidated funds to purchase Invesco BulletShares 2022-2024 Corporate Bond ETFs. He proposed to purchase 1/3 of the in 2022 Maturity (BSCM), 1/3 in 2023 Maturity (BSCN) and 1/3 in 2024 Maturity (BSCO). One-third of the liquidated funds would equal approximately $16,000 for each year of maturity. The class voted unanimously to purchase.

02/16/2022

Today in class we had the opportunity to learn from guest speaker, Manny Mendez, the CFO for Evolved Technologies LLC. Manny discussed his past employment experience and his journey to his current position.

As a class we sold LKQ, Pepsi, and Apple (SAFF portfolio only) to lock in gains, as well as create capital to purchase new equities.

We had three pitches in class today: Arrow Electronics, Disney, and United Healthcare. Lauren McNeill presented on Arrow Electronics and this investment will help us to reach our information technology target allocation. We are significantly lacking diversity in the communications sector so Tomás Estrella presented on Disney to fix this issue. Kurt Gallup presented on United Healthcare to diversify our healthcare sector. We chose to purchase all three securities.

02/09/2022

Today the SAFF class had two proposals and further discussed rebalancing our portfolio. We spent the majority of the time figuring out what our Target allocations for each sector will be, as well as the approximate percentages of our portfolio we should aim for in our proposals.

Alyssa Boushell proposed to purchase T-Mobile US (TMUS), a company focused on wireless communications services to these customers, as well as a selection of wireless devices and accessories. T-Mobile has a competitive advantage compared to AT&T and Verizon due to their competitors 5G network interference with Aircraft Altimeters. The class voted to purchase this stock and allocate 4.1% of our SAFF portfolio and 4.4% of our CIBEF portfolio. By purchasing this stock, we will be closer to our target allocation of the Communications sector.

Nicholas Sievert proposed to purchase Anthem Inc. (ANTM), a leading company in the healthcare sector. The class voted to purchase this stock, and allocate 4.1% of our SAFF Portfolio and 4.4% of our CIBEF portfolio to this stock. The purchase of this stock will allow us to reach our target Healthcare sector allocation.

01/26/2022

Today the SAFF class continued to work on our Economic Forecast. We spent the majority of class discussing the different sectors, then decided whether to overweight, underweight or to keep neutral in each sector. After doing this the class decided our Target Allocations for each sector.

Following our work on our Economic Forecast, we had two pitches. Gavin Spaur pitched to sell 25% of our current alternative asset holdings and reallocated 15% of that to purchase COMT, a commodity ETF. The remaining 10% will go back into our cash account for further investments later on in the semester. The class unanimously voted to go through with this purchase.

Wyatt Smith pitched to purchase Bio- Rad Laboratories Inc. (BIO), an innovative life science research and clinical diagnostic product developer. We decided to table this discussion for next week so we would collectively have time to perform more research on this stock.

01/19/2022

Today we had the opportunity to meet with Rod Esch, the President of the UNC Foundation. Through his presentation, our class gained insights into our responsibility as fiduciaries for the foundation, insurance and reinsurance, as well as his previous background in the Finance and Accounting industry. For example, he talked about complex reinsurance and CDO products that he turned down due to their complexity.

Following his discussion, the class discussed the foundation's goals for us for this year. Additionally, we continued to work on our Economic Forecast. We are really looking forward to growing the Foundations portfolio this semester.

11/11/2021

Yesterday, November 10th, 2021 the SAFF class met and hosted guest speaker, Barry Engle.
Barry Engle is the CEO and founder of Qell, a publicly-traded special purpose acquisition company (S**C) with a focus on next generation mobility, transportation and sustainable industrial technologies.
Barry Engle was kind enough to meet with us virtually over zoom to speak about his past experience in the automotive industry and share valuable insight on the industry of sustainable transportation technologies in relation to his S**C, Qell.

We did not have any pitches this week. Instead, we used this time to create a timeline, outline, and framework for our end of year newsletter and presentation. We assigned each manager a specific portion of the newsletter to be completed by next class period.

Since last week, our portfolios are down 30 basis points from the previous week's report. We believe this is due to the ongoing turmoil caused by the Chinese based company Evergrande. Our portfolio is comprised of multiple equities based in the Asia region, where Evergrande mostly functions. However, the portfolios are up 4.26% since the beginning of the semester.

11/05/2021

Yesterday, November 3rd, 2021 the SAFF class met and had a guest speaker and one pitch.

Deborah Lacey, CFA CFP (a financial advisor from Impact Financial Strategies) was kind enough to visit and talk to us about the ins and outs of being a financial advisor.

Gavin Spaur pitched an alternative investment in iShares Mortgage Real Estate ETF (REM) which is a fund that holds several REITs and real estate. The class voted to sell one third of our holdings in American Tower Corp (AMT) (also an alternative investment) to finance the purchase.

There was also some administrative discussion regarding class organization, things we can improve or refine for next semester, and organization and preparation for our presentation to the board on December 3rd.

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Greeley, CO

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