NORTHRIDGE : CSUN Students Show Returns in Stock Class

If Generation X-ers aren’t widely known for their financial responsibility, the Cal State Northridge Foundation last year gave a few twenty-somethings a chance--and $500,000--to change that image.

It’s paid off for both sides.

The foundation is $8,651 richer, and the students have proven they can play with the financial big boys--and whip a few of them at that.

“We did better than (Standard & Poor’s 500, a financial index), so I guess we did pretty well,” student Carlos Camargo said.

Camargo, 28, was one of 13 members of the most recent student investment management class, which he said learned much about real-world financial markets and at the same time made a little money for the foundation.

The $8,651 return on $500,000 was indeed “a little, not a lot,” said William Jennings, class teacher and chairman of the finance department. But, he added, “This was a very tough year (for investors). They did about the same as the market as a whole.”

Slightly more, in fact, with the average return coming in at 1.5%, according to Standard & Poor’s 500, while the class had a 1.6% return.

The program at CSUN is the latest of about 23 around the country, said foundation Executive Director Don Queen. About half of the other school foundations, however, offer the money only to graduate classes; the students at CSUN are all undergraduates. And the $500,000 portfolio those undergrads handle is probably the third or fourth largest, he said.

The reason for giving students--some of whom still take laundry home to mom--real money is it helps them take their studies seriously.

Students last term made elaborate studies of companies, charting their financial success, investigating their methods of management, Camargo said. They drew up charts and made presentations to classmates.

“Our textbook was Barron’s, the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, stuff like that,” he added.

The only problem so far with the class has been the spurt of furious competition it caused.

The foundation has four financial planners handling its $7-million endowment, said Queen, but during the first semester of the class, students began showing better numbers than the pros.

“They were busting their buttons on that one,” Queen said.