2008 Headlines
Johnson School Students Win UNC's Alpha Challenge Performance Award
Stock picks yield 97% return in the year since the competition
November 25, 2008 | Ithaca, NY | A team of Johnson School students including Bethany Caster, Shawn Field and Alex Pan (all MBA '09) recently won the Pat Hartley Performance Award from the 2007 Alpha Challenge hosted by the University of North Carolina. The Performance Award is given one year after the competition and recognizes the team whose investment ideas made the most money over the course of the year. The Johnson School team shared top honors with Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business because both teams coincidentally pitched the same stock recommendations.
Given a list of 90 transportation stocks, the Johnson School team picked two that yielded a combined 97% return in the 12 months between November 7, 2007 to November 13, 2008. They recommended an investment in a railroad company, Norfolk Southern (ticker: NSC), that was poised to take business from trucking companies and other rails. The team also recommended shorting stock in a shipping company, Dry Ships (ticker: DRYS), based on concerns about management quality and its reliance on China's pre-Olympics building spree.
The Johnson students competed against teams from 11 other schools, including Columbia Business School, London Business School, New York University's Stern School of Business, the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, and Wharton.
