Beacon VP Investments is a private investment group composed of graduate students, Ph.D. candidates, and postdoctoral fellows from Harvard University and MIT.  It invests in small and mid-cap biotechs that have drugs progressing through the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval process. Its recent successes include:

• Greater than 25% net return on investments during the group’s inaugural year.
• More than 53,000 views on published research articles since late October of last year.
• A recently introduced method for public investors to mirror its investment modeland trades.

One of the founding principles of Beacon VP Investments is “learning and leveraging collective intelligence.” In keeping with this principle, the group has created a “Beacon VP Basic Investment Education Series” in order to share its knowledge and experience with students who are interested in investing.

If you’re interested in participating, please RSVP here.

The Investment Education Series is a 3-month long course, consisting of three parts:

Part 1: An Introduction to Investing and Investment Approaches. Topics will include Value Investing, Growth Investing, Company Analysis, and Sector Rotation.

Part 2: Basic Concepts for Creating a Trading Plan and Portfolio. Your team will create a trading plan for a portfolio and ways to test your trading plan.

Part 3: Managing, Presenting and Fine-tuning Your Trading Plan. Your team will present actual trading results and ways to improve upon your plan.

This is a team-oriented and learn-by-doing course. You will be assigned to a team on Meeting 1. You will construct, manage and present a trading plan and portfolio with your team. While no investment or business experience is needed, you must be willing and able to commit to your team for the duration of the series. Therefore, we charge a $75 fee ($25 non-refundable and $50 deposit), due on 04/14/13, for this course and a $6 penalty/meeting for deserting your team. The net (deposit – penalties) will be refunded to you on 06/30/13.

All meetings will be held at One Broadway, Cambridge (CIC) from 4 to 6 pm.

Part 1: Value & Growth Investing

Meeting 1. (04/14/13)                           Idea Generation

Meeting 2. (04/28/13)                            Company Analysis (bottom-up approach)

Meeting 3. (05/12/13)                            Economic Cycle & Sector Rotation (top-down approach)

Part 2: Trading Plan & Portfolio Construction

Meeting 4. (05/19/13)                            Idea generation – brainstorm a trading plan with your team

Meeting 5. (06/02/13)                            Present your trading plan as a team

Meeting 5. (06/02/13)                            Start testing your trading plan- back testing may be possible

Meeting 6. (06/09/13)                            Portfolio Creation & Risk Management

Part 3: Portfolio Management

Meeting 7. (06/16/13)                            Trading Psychology

Meeting 8. (06/23/13)                            Share your actual paper trading results

Meeting 9. (06/30/13)                            Trading plan modifications