At The University of Dayton, Student Investors Make Magic — And Millions

University of Dayton photo

After Dayton students gain hands-on experience as portfolio managers under the tutelage of Davis Center Director Daniel J. Kapusta, they enjoy a high job placement rate, working for some of the top investment firms on Wall Street including BlackRock, Citi, Citadel, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley. But the more than 600 alumni of the Flyer Fund don’t end their involvement with their alma mater there. Many give back by helping students find internships — 91% of Dayton B-school undergrads complete an internship before graduation — and land post-graduation jobs. Through alumni help, 99% of Dayton’s undergraduate business students either find work, go to grad school, or enter a full-time service program within six months of graduation.

“I am extremely proud of the contribution of our past and present members of the Davis Center,” Kapusta says.

Bridget Momper credits alumni with helping her and her colleagues every step of the way, going back to her freshman year.

“There are a lot of them and they’re awesome,” she says. “UD grads in general are just so helpful and always willing to hop on a call. But there’s something about our Davis Center alum — they’re typically reaching out to us, asking us how they can help us. So when you become an intern your freshman year, you go through a bunch of different networking calls with different alum. And I remember my first call and it was just so awkward and I had no idea how you talk to a professional. But thankfully you feel a lot more comfortable because you do a lot of different networking calls when you’re a freshman. And then sophomore year you go through mock interviews with them. So they help prep you, give you some constructive criticism about how you interview.

“And then they are super helpful in actually getting your foot in the door at these bigger firms. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, whoever it may be, they’re probably not targeting Dayton. They’re probably targeting more of the Ivy Leagues. But it is really great that most of them know what the Davis Center is. And these alums spread the word about what we do. And then they hook us up with new people to network with.”

A MATTER OF (WELL-PLACED) TRUST

Trevor Collier

Dean Trevor Collier says one of the main reasons the Flyer Fund has gotten to the size it has is trust. The Investment Committee of the university’s Board of Trustees oversees the activities of the Davis Center, with students reporting on their investments (and divestments) every semester. Over the last two-plus decades, the committee has “developed a comfort level and a trust with the students and the faculty leading the program,” Collier says, “that they’re willing to continue to add dollars from the endowment to have these students manage it.”

That’s a major difference with some other schools’ funds, he says.

“If you look at many of our peer institutions, their endowment sizes have been shrinking because their investment committees have been cutting the amount that they’ve been allocating to their students,” Collier says. “So trust, and the process that we have, were really big factors in getting to this position.”

That process, he adds, is an “exemplar” of experiential learning.

“This is what we all strive for when we think about trying to have our students learn the theory and then put it to practice with some hands-on learning,” Collier says.

“In a finance class, they’re learning what a discounted cash flow analysis is. And then here, they’re actually using that to decide whether they should spend some of the university’s endowment to buy or sell an equity. And I think that’s fantastic.

“The other piece that our students are getting now that is really unique is, we have an outside client. The Dayton Foundation is a local nonprofit that helps manage money for other nonprofits and family foundations. And they have about $3 million that our students aren’t technically managing — we don’t make the trades for them — but they’re basically mimicking our portfolio. And so each semester, not only are our students reporting out to our advisory council, but they are also reporting out to the Dayton Foundation as an outside client. And they’re asking questions and deciding whether they want to continue to have their money invested by our students or not.

“It doesn’t get more real-world than that.”

‘ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS’

Bridget Momper says working as an intern, then an associate, then senior manager of the Davis Center involved intense training and deep learning. All of it paid off in her summer internship with New York financial services firm Jefferies, which she has parlayed into a full-time job this year. She’ll join her predecessor as senior manager at the Flyer Fund, Chris Flynn, who joined Jefferies after graduating in 2021.

“As a freshman intern you learn about fundamental analysis, you learn qualitative, quantitative side. You learn a lot of accounting,” Momper says. “It was really helpful because my sophomore-year classes were much more focused towards my major, which gave me a good basis to go into my classes and kind of already know some subjects that they were talking about.

“But I think the best part is that when you’re in your internship or you go to your full-time job, we are probably more of an equity research-based fund, but no matter whether you go into investment banking or sales and training or equity research, the skillsets you learn in the Davis Center are so applicable. I think no matter what role you go into, you learn how to pay attention to detail, you learn how to really thoroughly think and be questioned. You learn how to tell a story and really sell it.

“And so I think it’s just a great skill to have in the long run, even if equity research, or even finance, isn’t really what you end up doing way down the road.”

Momper’s advice to those following in her footsteps: Stay humble, keep your head down, and do the work.

“But ask a lot of questions,” she adds. “I was somebody who’d never wanted to ask questions because I didn’t want to look dumb. And then my other peers ended up doing a lot better that sophomore year when we became full-time analysts, simply because they weren’t afraid to speak up and ask the questions.”

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