Message from the Area Coordinator
There have been several exciting new developments in the Finance Area in the Naveen Jindal School of Management in the 2017-2018 academic year. Our MS in Finance programs have received the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) designation approved by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which recognizes the quality and rigor of the programs. Our undergraduate enrollment has shown steady growth. The MS in Finance Cohort and MS in Financial Engineering and Risk Management programs also have attracted many talented applicants. TFE Times ranked our MS in Finance program No. 11 in its 2018 Best Master of Finance Programs. Our faculty research maintains strong momentum through publications in top journals, and faculty members have gained increasing recognition among our peers. Overall, our programs continue to grow and flourish with support from our students, alumni, employers and world-class faculty.
Dr. Harold Zhang
Professor, Finance and Managerial Economics
Area Coordinator, Finance and Managerial Economics
Naveen Jindal School of Management
Recent Happenings
Panel Discussion – A Day in Your Career
The MS in Finance program holds enrichment events every semester. Students can mingle with classmates, network with industry executives and learn the latest trends in finance. The March panel discussion on “A Day in Your Career” included three guest speakers: Eivind Olsen, CFA, of Smith Group Asset Management; Nooshin Tajahmadi, COO/CFO of MassMutual in Dallas-Fort Worth; and Justin Zammit, vice president of Houlihan Lokey Investment Banking Services. They shared their professional experiences, insights on market trends and recommendations on careers in finance with a large group of students and faculty.
According to feedback from several students, the guest speakers provided valuable information on both practical daily skills and the critical skill sets needed for the finance industry, and students appreciated learning about the essential hard and soft skills they will need in their careers.
UT Dallas 2018 Spring Securities Trading Competition
MS in Finance Stock Trading Competitions are open to all undergraduate and graduate UT Dallas students, who do not risk any of their own money to participate but can earn cash prizes. The prize money awarded to top achievers incentivizes participation in the contest, which runs online via a virtual markets trading platform. The competition, which is offered every fall and spring semester, runs for eight weeks.
For MS in Finance administrators, the goal of every competition is to give students some valuable experience by introducing them to a trading and investment environment that simulates real life. Every competition complements what the students learn in their classes and gives them a chance to try out their investment ideas with a virtual $1 million.
Participation this past spring totaled 230 students. That topped the fall registration of 153 students. A total of $3,600 in prize money went to the winners each semester.
Here are some student testimonials from the past year:
“This competition helped me greatly in deepening my understanding of the markets, building meaningful relationships with other competitors and gathering data more efficiently. I am grateful to UTD for providing us with such a great learning opportunity and would encourage other students to take part in the future cycles of the competition to gain practical exposure in investing.” — Brij Dhingra, second-place winner, fall 2017
“Competing in the Fall 2017 Stock Trading Competition was a great opportunity to apply what I have learned in class to real life. Not only was I able to use the models I have learned in class to analyze stocks in terms of riskiness and returns, but furthermore I got encouraged to spend time on predicting future trends, which turned out to be more interesting than I expected. Overall, the Stock Trading Competition has helped me to improve my knowledge in finance and was a really fun and creative way to practice my trading skills.” — Anh Duc Hinh
“Overall, the Stock Trading Competition was an absolutely amazing experience. Since I am an extremely competitive person, I enjoyed competing against other students and carefully grew the portfolio through trying various investment strategies. The thrill of a strategy working and the flying up the ranks was the best feeling. There were many challenges throughout the competition, especially timing the volatile stocks to make a profit. This competition was the best learning experience I have had when it comes to investing, and I have transitioned to using these strategies to diversify a portfolio in the real world. The StockTrak software was an amazing and simple tool to help analyze each stock, and I used it daily throughout the span of the competition to make investment decisions.” — Zeeshaan Ramani
Financial Engineering and Risk Management
Director, MS FERM
The newly established MS in Financial Engineering and Risk Management program is a 36 semester-credit-hour STEM and cohort degree program and has three main focuses — finance, programming and risk management. It provides students with the practical and theoretical knowledge needed by those pursuing careers in quantitative finance. After the first year of the program, students are prepared to take the Financial Risk Manager exam. The program brings in financial risk management professionals to enrich students’ learning experiences. In February, a panel of five experts from the financial modeling and risk management areas discussed industry trends and opportunities with the students. This event allowed students to network with industry professionals and develop a potential long-term mentorship.
Student Spotlight
Graduate Finance Management Council (GFMC) Bridges Gap for MS in Finance Programs
The Graduate Finance Management Council (GFMC) is focused on the needs and interests of MS in Finance programs. Their support is critical for program learning enrichment and student success. Continuing students are encouraged to join GFMC and facilitate connections between prospective and existing students and alumni.
Alumni Corner
Sebastian Stinson is an experienced financial professional who specializes in risk management. He graduated from the Jindal School in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in finance. In 2017, he earned his Master of Science in Finance degree from JSOM while working full time at Capital One.
He attributes his career success to his MS in Finance program studies.
He says, “The level of academic preparation I received through the program was top-notch, and my career has benefited greatly from the experiences. … In my mind, the most important things I’ve learned from my time at UT Dallas were how to think critically, formulate my own opinions, conduct my own analysis, and how to adapt to the ever-changing environment around me.”
In six years, he has risen to a management role at a top-10 bank and has seven direct reports. At the end of April, he took on a new role at Citibank as operational risk vice president. He supports risk management for all of Citi’s retail consumer and mortgage business and reports directly to the senior vice president of risk management.
His recommendations for MS in Finance students include:
- “Any student considering or currently undertaking the MS in Finance program at UT Dallas has the unique opportunity to make the program work for him/her in their own way. Not with just the scheduling flexibility, but also the opportunity to learn as much about any particular topic as they wish. I never felt that the classroom was limited to a linear curriculum; it was much more organic than that. Moreover, the School of Management [offers] every opportunity to learn outside the classroom that you could possibly want — I especially enjoyed the trading lab.”
- “My strong recommendation to students is to broaden your horizons when it comes to your education. I’ve always felt learning is a lifelong process and only begins once you’ve left your educational institution. In my opinion, the most important thing you can learn is how to learn better, and there is no better place to master that skill than at UT Dallas.”
Faculty Focus
Study Explores Impact of Firms’ Financial Restatements on Bank Loans
Dr. Umit Gurun, professor of accounting and of finance and managerial economics, and Dr. Rebecca Files, associate professor of accounting, investigated whether restatements by economically related firms also influence the terms of a loan, such as an increased interest rate, for borrowers. Their study was recently published in Contemporary Accounting Research. Read more.
Faculty Research Corner
Finance/Managerial Economics
Blueshtein, Moran, Itai Bar Hava, Hadas Ganer Herman, Yeela Omer and Gila Ben David, “Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone Analogue as Sole Lutal Support in Antagonist-Based Assisted Reproductive Technology Cycles,” Fertility and Sterility, Volume 107, Issue 1, January 2017: 130-135. DOI: 10.1016/j.fertnstert.2016.10.011.
Ganglmair, Bernhard, “Efficient Material Breach of Contract,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Volume 33, Issue 3, August 2017: 507–540. DOI: 10.1093/jleo/eww020.
Gurun, Umit, Lauren Cohen and Chris Malloy, “Resident Networks and Corporate Connections: Evidence from World War II Internment Camps,” Journal of Finance, Vol. 72, Issue 1, February 2017: 207-248. DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12407.
—, Noah Stoffman and Scott Yonker, “Trust Busting: The Effect of Fraud on Investor Behavior,” The Review of Financial Studies, Vol. 32, Issue 4, April 2018: 1341–1376. DOI: 10.1093/rfs/hhx058.
—, Lauren Cohen, John M. Golden and Scott D. Kominers, “ ‘Troll’ Check? A Proposal for Administrative Review of Patent Litigation,” Boston University Law Review, Vol. 97, No. 5, October 2017: 1775 (2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3069819
Guttery, Randall and Carolyn Reichert, “Do Water Towers Affect Property Values?” Journal of Property Tax Assessment and Administration, 2017.
— and S.L. Poe, “Using a Cannabis Real Estate Investment Trust to Capitalize a Marijuana Business,” The Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management, 2017.
Lewin, Peter, “Capital Valuation, What Is It and Why Does It Matter? Insights from Austrian Capital Theory,” Journal of Business Valuation and Economic Loss Analysis, Vol. 12, Issue s1, July 2017. DOI: 10.1515/jbvela-2016-0018
— and Nicolas Cachanosky, “Value and Capital: Austrian Capital Theory, Retrospect and Prospect,” Review of Austrian Economics, Vol. 31, Issue 1, March 2018: 1-26.
Liebowitz, Stan, “A Replication of Four Quasi-Experiments and Three Facts From ‘The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis’ (Journal of Political Economy, 2007),” Economics: The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, 11, No. 2017-13: 1–21. DOI: 10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2017-13
Rebello, Michael, Tom Noe and Yufeng Han, “Horses for Courses: Fund Managers and Organizational Structures,” Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 52, Issue 6, December 2017: 2779-2807. DOI: 10.1017/S0022109017000795
— and Nina Baranchuk, “Spillovers From Good-News and Other Bankruptcies: Real Effects and Price Responses,” Journal of Financial Economics, 2017.
Siegenthaler, Simon and Olivier Bochet, “Better Later Than Never? An Experiment on Bargaining Under Adverse Selection,” International Economic Review, published online Feb. 10, 2018. DOI: doi.org/10.1111/iere.12292.
—, “Meet the Lemons: An Experiment on How Cheap-Talk Overcomes Adverse Selection in Decentralized Markets,” Games and Economic Behavior, Vol. 102, March 2017: 147-161. DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2016.11.001
Community Outreach
The University of Texas at Dallas is very excited to present the eighth annual Top Trader Competition. This two-month virtual stock trading competition in the summer will introduce high school students to the world of investment management and test them against each other to determine who can make the smartest trades and the most money. The competition, which runs from June 4 to July 27, is open to students who will be in the ninth through 12th grade in the 2018-2019 academic year. The first-place prize is $1,200. Other prizes include Google Home, Apple watch and many more.
To participate, sign up online. The Top Trader team will contact you with registration information. See the competition website for complete rules and requirements, and follow the updates on Facebook.
