The UW School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) recently took home a $10,000 win on the 20th CFA Institute Research Challenge in Hong Kong SAR on May 12. The team won the competition after six rigorous rounds starting against national, regional, and global competitors.

The team was composed of Ethan Alexander-Fraser, Jei Raman Gnaneswaran, Michael Huang, Quynh-Anh Le, and Alicia Wen. The UW team beat out over 8,000 students representing over 1,100 universities located in over 100 countries. Other finalist teams were from Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, University of Ljubljana, and California State University Fullerton. 

The global challenge was hosted by the CFA Institute, an organization working to standardize requirements in the investment industry. In the CFA Institute Research Challenge, an investment management research competition, students take on the role of financial analysts to gain hands-on mentoring, connection with CFA charterholders, and intensive training in equity research to make a proposal to buy, sell, or hold publicly traded companies.

The preparation for this challenge starts in the fall term of the prior year. Gnaneswaran described his competition experience: “It was a competition that lasted about six months, and the first one or two months, doing a lot of the initial research work, putting the story together, and just trying things… and for me I think that was the hardest just because there was so many ideas, we had so much work done, but we don’t know which is the best idea – some are good, some are bad.” 

When asked what tools helped him, he listed IBISWorld, alongside general research of the internet, AI LLMs such as Claude and ChatGPT – but the real differentiating factor was the school’s intensive alumni network. 

The alumni network consists of recently graduated alums and long-term seasoned professionals. Huang, another member on the UW team, describes how they were particularly helpful in the question and answer (Q&A) portion.”We’d have a call with them, and they would give us feedback and a sample Q&A period – that just helped in terms of getting real world practice in.”

Both Gnaneswaran and Huang recommended the CFA Institute Research Challenge as a way of gaining experience. 

“It’s really a competition where the floor is yours, like you have some requirements here and there, but ultimately it is really up to your creativity,” Gnaneswaran said. “Try to be as unique as you can, as what you get out of it is what you put in.”