Morgan State University’s New Student-Managed Investment Fund Provides Real-World Experience in Finance

Transferring to Morgan State University from Prince George’s Community College in Fall 2021, Christian Covington was pleased to find a growing institution with a wealth of resources and knowledgeable professors who cared about their students’ success. Joining Morgan’s Investment Club the next year grew the Bachelor of Science in Finance scholar’s positive Morgan experience, as the student organization offered weekly opportunities to meet and learn from major finance industry players such as Goldman Sachs, Lazard and T. Rowe Price.

This fall, as Covington settles into the role of Investment Club president, a new student program is continuing his elevation. Morgan State University’s Student-Managed Investment Fund (SMIF), launched in September, is giving Morgan Accounting and Finance majors the opportunity to manage and invest ‘real money.’ In the process, the students gain real-world portfolio management knowledge and experience and acquire skills in securities research, stock pitching, making buy/sell decisions and preparing investment performance reports. 

Covington and five other members of the Investment Club are managing the SMIF, which was seeded with initial funding of $120,000. The initiative was spearheaded by the Graves School of Business and Management in collaboration with the Morgan State University Foundation, to complement the theoretical concepts Morgan students learn in the classroom with practical skills that will distinguish them in the competitive world of finance.

Most of the seed funding came from Morgan students’ winnings from national case competitions, and the remaining funds were raised by the Graves School.

T. Rowe Price employees helped Investment Club members prepare for the program’s launch during a Student-Managed Investment Fund Boot Camp last year. They taught the students how to build a “three-statement model” that used income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements to project how companies would perform on the stock market. The SMIF managers are now using that knowledge to help their Fund track the performance of the S&P 500.

The students’ work with the SMIF is integrated with their Morgan coursework and with their activities in Morgan’s Capital Markets Lab, a state-of-the-art financial laboratory, in the Morgan Business Center, that delivers real-time market data feeds, news and news analysis from exchanges, brokerage houses, media and financial services. The meetings of Morgan’s Investment Club are held weekly in the Lab.

George Micheni is director of the Capital Markets Lab and is also the program manager for the Student-Managed Investment Fund.

“The Lab is the ideal venue for the SMIF, because it is offering essential resources required for the successful operation of the Fund,” Micheni says. “One of the most significant assets we have in the Capital Markets Lab is the Bloomberg Terminal, which provides real-time access to comprehensive financial data and market insights from the U.S. and global markets and enables students to engage in sophisticated investment analysis and decision-making.”

Finance 350 is the connecting point for the SMIF and Morgan’s curricula, explains the Fund’s student advisor, Pritam Saha, Ph.D., associate professor of Finance at Morgan. 

“One of the objectives of this class is to train (the students) as sales-side equity analysts” though their work with the SMIF, says Dr. Saha. Morgan hopes to eventually grow the student-managed fund’s $120,000 in seed money to $1 million, but “the goal of the course is not to make money,” Saha adds. “The goal is to have the students learn all the skills required to be good financial analysts.”

Covington’s work as a manager for the SMIF is not his first impressive real-world experience in his field. He served as an intern with T. Rowe Price in Fall 2023 and is working with Goldman Sachs as an asset and wealth management intern now, supporting one of the Fortune 500 firm’s financial advisors in Philadelphia. The position with Goldman Sachs flowed from his participation in the company’s “Market Madness” case competition as a member of Morgan’s team, which landed in the top five among 40 HBCU competitors, last year.

The work ethic Covington learned from his father, and the academic knowledge and experiential learning he has received through Morgan, have put him on a promising path.

As a leader of the Student-Managed Investment Fund, “We have to stay in tune with what’s happening in the markets. We get to look at different sectors. It keeps us in tune with what’s happening in the world,” Covington says. “I think it’s something that could definitely help on the job.”

The program director, Micheni, expects the SMIF to benefit not only the student managers but the Graves School as a whole.

“I’m looking at more companies coming in to hire our students. I’m looking at more students interning (at large companies) in high-end positions. I’m looking at the School of Business and Management growing more than it is right now in terms of exposure,” Micheni says. “… I think this new (program) is going to expand our opportunities more than we can imagine.”