NYU Students Cut Through the Earnings Noise

This column was written by Stockpickr member Ira Krakow.

Investment Club Watch recently profiled the Michael Price Student Investment Fund (MPSIF), a family of funds managed directly by MBA students at the New York University Stern School of Business. We caught up with the student fund managers in the middle of the current quarterly stream of corporate data known as earnings season to find out how these money-runners-in-training invest amid all the breaking news and earnings reports.

There are four funds in the MPSIF family: growth , fixed-income , value and small-cap . Here is a breakdown of the investment methodologies that each fund's manager uses and the recent stock picks they have made based on these methodologies.

Sticking to the Thesis

The growth fund. According to growth fund manager Ryan Fiftal he has a disciplined investment philosophy. Fiftal doesn't react impulsively to every late-breaking story, such as trading either before or after earnings announcements.

Fiftal explains, "In the growth fund, we try to have an investment time horizon of at least two years. Given that MPSIF analysts are effectively part-time (simultaneously taking a full load of MBA classes), we are at a competitive disadvantage against full-time managers and traders. We simply cannot predict or react to news, including earnings announcements, as well as our competitors [professional fund managers].

"Therefore, we look closely at company fundamentals and try to determine who is going to outperform over the medium to long-term. Quarterly earnings are certainly important, providing a gauge of how each investment thesis is playing out. However, we rarely buy or sell based on a single quarter's earnings."