A student team from ESMT Berlin  has won the Global Network for Advanced Management Investment Competition’s top Performance Prize.

Ten teams from throughout the Global Network for Advanced Management (GNAM) took part in the six-month contest, which challenged students to assemble and manage a stock portfolio from companies based in their home countries. The winning team had the highest risk-adjusted returns over the six-month period.

ESMT Berlin achieved a 46.37% return, far ahead of second-place finisher, Renmin University of China, School of Business, which had a 14.54% return.

"Thankfully, the German equity gods smiled on us with a nice return and even better timing," said Thomas Miller-Jones ’15, a former ESMT Berlin MBA student who was on the winning team. "If only this could happen in our personal trading accounts."

Miller-Jones said his entire team knew that with just a six-month investment horizon, volatility would be a big factor in stock performance. "Chasing big beta and a hammered global giant in Volkswagen, and designing a portfolio correlated to the German auto industry were our answers in lieu of looking for fundamentally discounted stocks that can sometimes take years to recover," he said.

The competition was sponsored by the Yale School of Management’s International Center for Finance (ICF). A tool on the Global Network website tracked the performance of each team’s portfolio.

The top eight finishers split a $5,000 prize, $2,318.27 of which went to ESMT Berlin. Rewards were based on a team’s portfolio return rate multiplied by the total prize pool.

In addition to ESMT Berlin and Renmin, the competition included teams from EGADE Business School, Tecnológico de Monterrey; IE Business School; Koҫ University Graduate School of Business, Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University; National University of Singapore Business School; Seoul National University Business School; Universitas Indonesia Faculty of Economics; and University of Ghana Business School.

“Teams share their stock ideas from home markets around the world,” said William Goetzmann, the director of the ICF and the Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Management Studies at the Yale School of Management. “The idea mirrors the philosophy and benefits of the GNAM itself: everyone in the network benefits from a collective effort to aggregate different perspectives.”

“We hope to run this competition annually and to demonstrate that the whole is more than the sum of the parts,” Goetzmann added. “Local knowledge contributes to a globally diversified portfolio.”

The competition also included a Security Analysis Prize, given in November 2015. Teams from Koç University Graduate School of Business and the National University of Singapore Business School were chosen as co-winners. That competition assessed quality of investment theses, research, responses to questions, and presentation skills.

“The GNAM competition pushed us to do deeper analysis of our local equity market than ever before,” said Sean Bellamy McNulty ’17, a National University of Singapore MBA candidate.

“The judges, with their industry backgrounds, forced us to think on our feet and immediately found the weak points in our story. It was a fantastic learning experience for all of us.”

Lloyd Baskin, ICF executive director, thanked every team for taking part in the competition. “On behalf of the International Center for Finance, I wish to congratulate the winners and thank all of our participants in the inaugural GNAM Investment Competition,” Baskin said. “The two-part competition was a terrific success due to the work and contributions of the 10 teams of students.”