The team performed an in-depth analysis on the casual dining restaurant, Kona Grill (NASDAQ: KONA). The overall analysis took a top-down approach. First, macroeconomic conditions and trends pertaining to the restaurant industry were analyzed. Next, a comprehensive financial analysis was performed on Kona Grill and its closest competitors. Finally, various absolute and relative valuation techniques were performed to determine the intrinsic value of the stock, which came out to $8.29. Compared to the current price on 4/08/2013 of $8.83, it was determined that the stock was fairly valued, warranting a hold recommendation.

This thesis discusses two separate lectures conducted by investment professionals for the students of FIN 498H Applied Investment Management at the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management. Both lectures focused on stock-picking strategies, but offered different approaches to investing. As a University of Arizona alumnus and Financial Advisor for Merrill Lynch in Tucson, Ken Morris exposes common investment pitfalls and suggests criteria for a concentrated equity portfolio. His main suggestion is to maintain a long-term investment horizon and hold a concentrated basket of companies that feature a sustainable competitive advantage at a margin of safety. As a hedge fund manager, CFA, and MBA from the GSB, Peter Brimm reveals his exhaustive and meticulous investment research process that he uses to make large bets on only a few stocks.

The CFA research competition is a global competition that allows university teams to engage in financial analysis of a publicly traded company. This year the company chosen to analyze was Sprouts Farmers Market, a low cost, health-oriented grocer based out of Phoenix, Arizona. The competition included a visit with Sprouts management in Phoenix, research on Sprouts and the industry, and the creation of a research report with a buy/sell/hold recommendation on Sprouts’ stock. Our research report synthesized our research and issued a sell recommendation for the company based on an analysis of the industry, analysis of Sprouts strengths and weaknesses, analysis of macroeconomic conditions, risks, and a comprehensive valuation of Sprouts. After producing this research report our team presented our research to judges in Phoenix in a 10 minute presentation for the second part of the competition.

For my finance, honors thesis I participated in the 4th annual CQA Investment Challenge. The goal of the challenge is to successfully manage an equity long-short, market neutral portfolio (hedge fund). I worked on a team with three other guys from the Applied Portfolio Management class to invest and manage $20,000,000 of hypothetical money. Our investment horizon ran from October 30, 2015 – April 1, 2016. The stock universe we had access to was the Russell 1000, which mainly consists of the highest-ranking large cap stocks in the US equity market. Thirty-one teams from different universities were judged at the end of the competition on absolute return rank, adjusted return rank (the Sharpe ratio) and evaluation of the team video, which discussed investment strategy. The University of Arizona team achieved an absolute return of 6.47%, Sharpe ratio of 0.36 and abnormal return (alpha) of 20.05%. We finished with a ranking of 7th place out of 31 participating schools.

In this honors thesis, I attempted to develop an investment strategy to analyze the U.S. stock market by studying the correlations between nine sectors defined by the Select Sector Standard & Poor’s Depository Receipts (SPDR). These funds are a group of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) which are traded worldwide and can adequately represent the performance of the sectors. Through my method, I hope to identify the sector trends in the future by evaluating the sector ETF’s most recent short-term period data. This analysis will provide an alternate investment method for investors to avoid short-term investment risk as well as explanations of why I think the approach may not be valid.