Baruch College, Drexel University and the University of Texas lead the way in the inaugural Institutional Investor All-America Student Analyst Competition

NEW YORK, April 30, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Institutional Investor magazine group released online the results of its first-ever All-America Student Analyst Competition, a contest that allowed undergraduate and graduate students in finance to test their mettle against like-minded participants to develop the best simulated stock portfolios. The All-America Student Analyst Competition, which ran from September 2012 through January 2013, is the result of a collaboration between Institutional Investor and Mark My Media, a Stamford, Connecticut–based firm that has built a sophisticated software platform to track portfolios, and involved nearly 700 students from 34 U.S. colleges and universities. Performance was graded quantitatively on multiple factors to determine the overall winners, as well as those in seven different industry sectors.

More than 20 schools have students who finished in the top 100, led by Baruch College/City University of New York, with 13. Drexel University in Philadelphia is second, with 11 competitors in the top 100, followed by the University of Texas at Austin (nine), Los Angeles's Loyola Marymount University (eight) and Manhattan-based Fordham University's (seven). The University of San Diego has the overall first place student, Daniel McAllister, a 28-year old MBA candidate. The University of Virginia has the second place finisher, Matthew Olfat, a 19-year-old systems engineering and financial math double major.

Leading traders in the competition included both graduate and undergraduate students, with seven of the top ten finishers still in pursuit of undergraduate degrees. Schools whose students performed particularly well included a number of MBA programs from well-known universities such as UC Berkeley's Haas School, Cornell University's Johnson School and Fordham's Graduate School of Business. Undergraduate programs that stood out included Baruch's Zicklin School, Drexel and the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas. Schools such as Florida International University and Loyola Marymount were well represented by students from both undergraduate and graduate programs.

"The results of the All-America Student Analyst Competition speak to the quality of finance being taught across the U.S. at both the undergraduate and graduate levels," says Institutional Investor Editor Michael Peltz.

The rankings were compiled across seven industry sectors and one general category, utilizing a proprietary six-factor algorithm developed by Mark My Media. The general category considered net benchmark outperformance, volatility, net exposure impact, gross exposure impact, long alpha and short alpha. The industry sectors mirrored the categories used in Institutional Investor's celebrated All-America Research Team ranking of the top Wall Street equity analysts: Basic Materials, Capital Goods/Industrials, Consumer, Energy, Financial Institutions, Healthcare and Technology, Media & Telecommunications.

"Ultimately, the competition gives students the opportunity to be more equipped for a career in finance, and the results shed light on the leading performers and their uncanny ability to deliver alpha," says John Power, CEO of Mark My Media.

The competition was powered by Mark My Media's ALPHASEAL® investing platform — a cloud-based simulator that provides each trader with a personal portfolio, tracking the equity value, the net asset value, and profits and losses on a daily basis and imposing the same mark-to-market discipline that Wall Street and money management firms use to measure performance. By tracking their own performance, students at colleges large and small can provide potential employers with an objective measurement of their investment acumen.

To see a full list of winning participants, visit www.institutionalinvestor.com.

About Institutional Investor:
Now in its fifth decade, Institutional Investor has consistently distinguished itself among the world's foremost financial publications with groundbreaking journalism and incisive writing that provides "must read" intelligence for a global audience. This award-winning magazine and website is essential reading for the world's leading financiers, corporate executives and government officials, who rely on the breadth and depth of coverage that have made Institutional Investor such a premier publication. For more information, visit www.institutionalinvestor.com.

About Mark My Media
Mark My Media, based in Stamford, Connecticut, produces league tables for the financial services industry and has a sophisticated software platform to track portfolios. The company's ALPHASEAL® offering helps business students bridge the gap between what is taught in the classroom and what is expected on the trading floor by giving them a tool to track stock performance along similar metrics as those used by investment professionals. Mark My Media treats data as a precious asset and allows system-users to warehouse their data on our own hardware, an SAS-70 certified environment accessible via the cloud. For additional information on the company please visit www.markmymedia.com.

Media Contact for Mark My Media and Institutional Investor:
Amy Rosenberg 
212-885-0581
[email protected]

SOURCE Mark My Media