SUNY Oswego team places in financial research competition

The SUNY Oswego CFA Research Challenge Team won its bracket and took second overall in the annual Western New York Chartered Financial Analyst Institute Research Challenge on Feb. 18.

In its bracket, Oswego students bested Syracuse University, the University of Rochester and Niagara University before placing only behind overall winner Canisius (which won a bracket including Cornell University, University at Buffalo and SUNY Geneseo).

The student team consists of Amy Alba, Ahmed Albajari, Dillon Nimako, Sean Paul Owen and Sami Rajput.

The competitive event offers “hands-on mentoring and intensive training in financial analysis,” said Nimako, the team captain and a senior finance major. “Students work in teams to research and analyze a publicly traded company and then write a research report on their assigned company with a buy, sell or hold recommendation.”

Mary Tone Rodgers, the college’s Marcia Belmar Willock Professor of Finance and previously a Wall Street analyst for three decades, is the team’s faculty adviser. Matt Wilson, a 2013 SUNY Oswego graduate who is now an Equity Research Associate at Oppenheimer & Co., served as an industry mentor for the team.

“This is a great accomplishment for our school," Nimako said "We attribute our team's success to rigorous persistence, excellent chemistry and an amazing faculty mentor to assist us in the process.”

The preparation included around 150 hours of work between August to February, and entailed performing intensive research, preparing a research paper, creating the presentation and practicing to ensure the best delivery of their gathered facts.

The team won a $500 prize – in $100 Visa gift cards for each student – and a trophy, but moreover gained valuable experience and connected with one another.

“My personal biggest takeaway of this experience was the merits received from working with a determined, ambitious, high-spirited, dependable team,” Nimako said. “Over the duration of the project, my teammates (and faculty mentor) became more than just associates; but rather my best friends, and I genuinely hope that I'll have the pleasure of working with them again in the future.”

The Western New York competition was sponsored jointly by the CFA Society of Buffalo and the CFA Society of Rochester. About 300 societies around the world sponsor teams in these competitions, which name one international winning team each year.