The Ole Miss Finance Club, formerly known as the Ole Miss Financiers’ Club, has experienced unprecedented growth. In less than a semester, the organization has grown from 25 to 170 members and weekly meeting attendance has surged from an average of 10 attendees to 70.
The Finance Club aims to educate students on how to handle their personal finances, introduce them to leaders in the field and provide hands-on investment experience. Presidents Andrew McDonough and Yiping Wang are optimistic about the club’s future.
“Some of the things I think we’ve implemented is a hyper focus on the members. When it comes to something like finance, there are a lot of people who want to break into it,” McDonough, a junior finance and management double major from Palm Beach, Fla., said. “We have a lot of kids who might be engineers or accountants who want to come in and learn about finance because it’s a personal skill.”
In addition to general member involvement, the club has created a competitive way for students to learn about investing. Finance Club members are encouraged to share stock pitches during the organization’s weekly meetings. From there, a new subgroup called the Ole Miss Investment Group decides whether or not the club will act on the investment opportunity.
“We have a half a million dollar fund that we trade stocks on. We have, I believe, 11 members of (the Ole Miss Investment Group), each of those members own a certain sector, and within that sector there’s stocks,” McDonough said.
The fund comes from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Investment Challenge. In the challenge, students from across 26 schools compete to produce the greatest returns on the funds they receive and manage. So far this semester, the club has invested in companies such as PayPal, Peabody Energy and Leggett & Platt.
Although the designation of the Ole Miss Investment Group as the committee that handles the TVA’s funds is new, the Finance Club has been a competitor since the challenge was created in 1998 and won second place in 2020.
“They’re a federally funded utilities company specializing in electricity, but they’re based out of Tennessee. There’s 26 mostly regional universities we compete with, so schools like the University of Memphis, (Mississippi) State, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who also have a half a million dollar stock portfolio,” McDonough said.
Students interested in joining the Ole Miss Investment Group must undergo an application process that holistically analyzes their student involvement with both the Finance Club and the university.
“At the Ole Miss Investment Group, we really try to structure it as a kind of more professional, hedge-fund style, niche group for our more advanced students that are really, really passionate about the space,” Wang said. “We think this is pretty unique in the SEC region.”
While the Ole Miss Investment Group involves an application process, Wang, a sophomore accounting and finance double major from Oxford, emphasized that the Finance Club is for everyone at UM.
“You don’t want to create a barrier to entry for the students,” Wang said. “That’s the role of the Ole Miss Finance Club. (We) accept any student that has a passion in finance.”
Ashley Linscott, a sophomore finance major from Chicago, became a member of the Finance Club earlier this semester.
“I’ve actually learned a lot. I didn’t know that much about investment banking, and I’ve learned so much about investing and different strategies and finance in general,” Linscott said.
Aside from gaining investment skills, Linscott said that the social aspect of the club is also a benefit.
“You get to meet like-minded individuals that share the same passion for finance, so I’ve made a lot of connections through that. We also get to listen to very honorable speakers, and I’ve learned so many different insights about potential careers in finance,” Linscott said.
Another key aspect of the organization is getting to hear from field experts, including people like Finance Club alumnus Andrew Wilkes, Wang said.
“One of (the alumni) I really admire is Andrew Wilkes,” Wang said. “He chatted with more than 80 bankers (over coffee), and he had no significant prior internships, but he landed a job at J.P. Morgan which is, by far, I think one of the most difficult jobs to get, even for Harvard and Ivy League students.”
The Ole Miss Finance Club meets in Lamar Hall Room 131 at 6 p.m. on Thursdays, and all students are welcome to attend. Depending on attendance, there are occasionally several meetings in one week. The organization posts updates on their Instagram account.
“At Ole Miss especially, trying to break into finance, you have to have thick skin. You have to have a lot of grit. You have to have a lot of resilience, because it’s hard to break through. But when you do, you know you’re better,” McDonough said.
