Nittany Lion Fund students talk stocks in live television appearance

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Three Penn State Smeal College of Business students represented the Nittany Lion Fund on the Fox Business television show "Money with Melissa Francis" on a segment that aired in mid-November.

The Nittany Lion Fund is a student-managed investment fund with more than $5 million in assets and is one of the few student-managed funds supported by actual investor money, not endowment dollars.

On the live segment, Jarrod Bruno, Dylan Beil and Emily Zheng answered Francis’ rapid-fire questions about what stocks the fund is currently investing in and how various sectors are performing.

Though the live show required the students to think on their feet and answer questions quickly, Zheng said that it is this kind of environment that J. Randall Woolridge, professor of finance and president of the NLF, ensures the fund managers are prepared for.

“We take questions like that regularly from professor Woolridge, and there’s an expectation — both from him and from our peers — that we’re keeping up with what’s happening in the market,” said Zheng, who currently serves as the director of education in the Penn State Investment Association and was previously lead analyst for the energy sector. “We’re really trained to think dynamically and on the spot.”

The NLF meets three times a week. One of those meetings is devoted to an overview of the market and how various stocks have performed; the other two meetings revolve around stock pitches, and students will give presentations and take questions.

“There is a lot of dynamic discussion that goes on around each pitch, and we vote on every decision,” said Zheng. “Because we have real investors instead of being endowment-based, our decisions are very real.”

Bruno and Beil are both members of the Nittany Lion Fund Executive Board and will graduate next year. Bruno is president of the fund and previously served as the lead analyst for the health care sector. Beil is the chief investment officer and was previously lead analyst of the financials sector. Both Bruno and Beil will begin full-time positions with Goldman Sachs after graduation. Zheng, a member of the Nittany Lion Fund leadership team, will intern with Goldman Sachs for the second time next summer. She is slated to graduate in 2015.

The Nittany Lion Fund offers a unique opportunity for high-performing finance students to connect to real-world investors. The fund’s student managers operate out of the Rogers Family Trading Room, a state-of-the-art classroom and laboratory that replicates real-world trading experience. Students in the Trading Room use dataset resources to simulate trading, portfolio management and other finance-related models, and real-time stock tickers and data boards offer important financial information.