The SMF Portfolio

The Trustees of Trinity University voted on February 17, 1998 to allocate $500,000 of the University endowment to a student managed fund. Baker Duncan, then Chair of the Investment Committee, and Ronald Calgaard, then President of Trinity University, counseled the students during the several months prior to the presentation. Their advice, and that of other Trustees, helped to shape the course. The stated goal was to teach students to be successful investors, not speculators. Repeated infusions of funds allocated by the University endowment and fund success have increased the student managed fund to more than $11 million by the end of 2021.

The SMF portfolio pursues a core-satellite approach, combining low-cost index funds with active stock or industry picks. The fund is meant to be fully invested at all times and funds not allocated to active picks are held in our passive index portfolio. The Investment Policy Statement can be found here. 

The investment approach was significantly changed in 2019 with the main objective to invest excess cash the fund built up and carried over previous years. The policy change was approved by the Board of Trustees in December of 2019 and the changes were implemented over the first 8 months of 2020. 

 

Passive Index Portfolio 

The passive index portfolio is held to allow the fund to be fully invested at all times. It further serves a pedagogical purpose on how to build a passive, low-cost investment portfolio that does not require knowledge and experience in investment research. 

The passive index portfolio is comprised of the following ETFs (as of 03/26/2024):

  • Vanguard Total International Stock ETF (VXUS)
  • Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI)

 

Active Holdings

The fund is limited to 15 active picks and each position is continuously followed by a student investment manager. 

The Team has settled on the following active picks (as of 03/26/2024).  This portfolio will remain in place over the summer break and will be taken over by the next SMF Team in August.

  • Visa (V)
  • Applied Materials (AMAT)
  • Microsoft (MSFT)
  • Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD)
  • Alphabet Inc (GOOGL)
  • Amazon (AMZN)
  • Carnival (CCL)
  • Novo Nordisk (NVO)
  • NVIDIA (NVDA)