Balance Update (April 29)

As of the April 29th SIMM's portion of the endowment fund is currently at $103,770. SIMM's E-Trade account is valued at $41,450.

Check back for weekly balance updates.

SIMM Donor Doug Kris to meet with students

Friday April 24th SBU alumni and SIMM donor Doug Kris will meet with students in the SIMM room at 1pm. He will be providing lunch and the meeting is open to all students.

Balance Update

As of 4 pm Wednesday April 22 SIMM's E-Trade account is worth $39,711. The endowment account held with Bank of New York/Mellon is worth $102, 489. Together SIMM's portfolio is worth $142,200.

Check back for balance updates every week.

Review of By-Laws

The class has undertaken a review of the by-laws to determine what changes are now necessary. Chief among the changes that we see necessary are:

• removal of the rule that mandates holding 5% cash
• clarification on ETF rules (for instance, can not short stocks, but can we buy ETF that is short?)
• inclusion of language that allows long option positions and covered short option positions.
• more rigorous rules as to what will be allowed over the summer
  

General Managers Report to Investment Committee

On Wednesday April 15th SIMM General Managers Dave Abriatis and Mark Larry reported to the SBU Investment Committee via conference call. Discussed was the status of the portion of the endowment fund managed by SIMM, updates on the class, investment strategies and some changes SIMM would like to make.

The Committee agreed to consider possibly switching SIMM's portion of the endowment account from the Bank of NY Mellon to an online platform, such as E-Trade or ThinkorSwim.

The General Mangers found the conference call very beneficial and a good opportunity to convey information to the Investment Committee. SIMM is looking forward to further discussions with the Investment Committee in the near future.

Goldman Sachs Raises $5 Billion in Sale to Repay TARP Funds - Bloomberg.com

Goldman Sachs Raises $5 Billion in Sale to Repay TARP Funds - Bloomberg.com:

"Goldman Sachs Group Inc., buoyed by better-than-expected earnings and a 54 percent gain in its stock price, raised $5 billion in a share sale to help repay $10 billion in government rescue funds.

The bank said today it sold 40.65 million shares at $123 each, 5.5 percent less than yesterday’s closing price of $130.15. The price was exactly the same level at which the bank last sold shares in September. Until last week, the shares hadn’t closed above $123 since Oct. 6.

Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein, 54, wants to refund money received from the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program in October to run his bank, which set a Wall Street pay record in 2007, without any limits on compensation."

I should put a disclaimer here that SIMM does own Goldman.

Performance Update

As of April 8th 2009 SIMM's E-Trade account has outperformed it's benchmark by 4.73% YTD. The portfolio is down -.28%, which is much better than -5.01% that the benchmark is down.

Check back soon for an update on performance.

Restarting the SIMM Blog

It has been a while, but we will be restarting this blog.

The two new authors will be Mark Larry and David Abriatis who are our General Managers this year.

Stay tuned for more posts!