Dalhousie MBA students are no strangers to investment clubs and have created and run many iterations of them in the past. With an intense curriculum and only two years in the program however, it’s often difficult to maintain continuity with each succeeding cohort. To remedy this, a group of students concentrating on finance and looking to create something more lasting have founded the CRMBA’s  first official hedge fund society: East Coast Capital (ECC).

The goal of ECC is to encourage classmates to join and attend weekly 1-2 hour meetings, with the hope of learning more about finance beyond the classroom. Many of the students who attend are interested in pursuing careers in finance, while others are simply looking to learn some real world application and the basics of investing and trading for personal use.

Each meeting begins with a “what’s in the news?” segment; by sharing real world events and stories that a fund manager would care about, students start to appreciate the effects of the finance industry on society (and vice versa!). This is often followed by the clubs’ co-chairs running tutorials on different trading strategies, analyzing portfolio returns, and basic investing practices. For the majority of meetings however, students typically break into their separate funds (organized by industry) and discuss investment strategies and stock picks.

Using Dalhousie’s Risk Lab and available Bloomberg Terminals, students then perform trades and create a multi-million dollar fund (fake money for now). In the near future, the vision is for ECC to invest real capital and become a fully functioning student-run hedge fund. This past semester, this initiative led the co-chairs to get involved with a local student-run venture capital initiative, Venture Grade. We spoke with one these co-chairs, Jaime Cahill, on her experience with East Coast Capital this year:

The goal this year was really to ratify a society and bring back an MBA hedge fund similar to the ones that existed before. For a busy MBA student with a non-business background – like most in our program – getting up to speed with the finance industry before interview season comes around can be really challenging. Even for those not necessarily interested in careers in finance, when else are you going to be able to discuss trading strategies with a group and learn the ins and outs of investing? – Jaime Cahill, ECC Co-Chair, MBA Class of 2017

Moving forward, the group is hopeful that ECC’s name and work will be continued by future cohorts and that all Dalhousie MBA students will have the opportunity to get involved. As it moves closer to its goal of managing real money as well, the opportunities for experiential learning will only grow.