April 06, 2006
Queens Campus -
On Friday, March 31, 2006, roughly 150 students, faculty and
administrators gathered at the Manhattan campus for the 2nd
Annual Investment Management Conference.
Kicking off a full day of speakers and breakout sessions
was Robert Hill of Ameriprise along with Bruce Ross of H.D. Vest
Financial Services, Bob Ince of Tribeca and Hall Geller of NASD.
The four speakers introduced and described a range of professional
certifications and related career paths for students. Bob Hill and
Bruce Ross focused on financial advising and planning and
referenced the CFA, CFP, and ChFC. Hal Geller concentrated on
securities licenses, in particular, what they enable individuals to
do that makes them attractive hires or helps advance their
careers.
In the second session entitled, Portfolio Management and
Construction, Jeffrey Heisler, Senior Analyst at Gottex Fund
Management of Boston, talked about the fund of funds structure in
the hedge fund area. Since hedge funds are lightly regulated
and information about them more difficult to get for investors, a
fund of funds structure adds value by picking different hedge funds
to be combined in a portfolio. His talk introduced the structure
and discussed its evolution and future challenges.
Jonathan Shelon, Global Asset Allocation Portfolio Manager for
Fidelity Management and Research, was a session speaker and the
deliverer of the keynote address. His portfolio structure talk
focused on age-based portfolios and the challenge of constructing
them to meet retirement objectives given the critical nature of the
objective and investors' tendencies to invest sub-optimally on
their own.
After a lunch break, Richard A. Highfield, Dean of The Peter J.
Tobin College of Business announced the winners of a nationwide
essay competition. Cash awards and certificates were presented to
first place winner Adam Rubin of Michigan, second place winner
Phillip Monin of Canisius and Daniel McGirr of NYU, who claimed the
third place spot. St. John's student Nataliya Taleva also received
Honorable Mention acknowlegement for her essay submission.
The afternoon portion of the conference included two breakout
sessions, one of which was entitled, "Current Trends in Commodities
Markets/Trading," led by Joseph O'Neill, Senior VP of Market
Development at the New York Board of Trade; and Gregory
Cotter, President and Head Trader of TriGlobal FX. The second
session, "Uses of Financial Labs/Trading Rooms on College
Campuses," was led by Patrick Gregory, a faculty member at Bentley
College and the Managing Director of Bentley's on-campus financial
lab.
Four presenters from NYSSA, the largest analyst society in the
world, led four break-out sessions in the late afternoon session.
Eric Stieglitz, of the Career Advocacy Group, introduced himself
and his three colleagues and announced that NYSSA is very active in
educating both investment professionals and students. Hamilton Lin,
Wall Street Training, described the investment banking career path
and its pros and cons, as John Eade of Argus Research Corp. talked
about how independent research provides an important function for
the markets.
Kedrick brown focused on trading careers in a seperate break out
session and emphasized their very fast pace, and the importance of
discipline.
Students were invited to a closing reception in the atrium of
the Manhattan campus.
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