The Else School of Management’s Louis Wilson Fund was established as a stock portfolio with a grant of $87,000 from the Merrill Lynch Foundation and matching funds from General Louis Wilson in 1989. By co-managing the portfolio, students experience the same challenges that they will soon face in their jobs: risk determination, stock and bond valuation, and financial forecasting with real dollars. Participants are required to research companies they wish to buy, sell, or hold and defend their recommendation before a board of professional investors. Since its creation, students have managed the fund so adeptly that it has consistently outperformed the S & P 500. This real-world success is a convincing endorsement of Else School graduates.
The primary objective of the Louis Wilson Fund is education in investment decision making. Students participating in the fund develop skills in evaluating economic, industry, and security analysis and in the effective communication of that research to others.
The fund seeks to obtain a favorable total return on invested assets, with an average 5-year return target equal to the average CPA inflation plus six percent. The long-term goal is to outperform a blended benchmark rate of return of the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 indexes by achieving long-term capital appreciation.
