Stetson University edged out the Florida Gators, the Florida State Seminoles and other teams to win a statewide investment competition this week and will now advance to national competition in Omaha, Neb., in April.

The best and brightest financial analyst students from six universities across the state competed in the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute’s Global Investment Research Challenge in Winter Park. The six Florida CFA Society chapters sponsor the challenge, which gathers students, investment industry professionals, publicly traded companies, and corporate sponsors together for a competition that promotes best practices in equity research and company analysis.

Teams were required to research, analyze and report on a publicly traded company, using the same standards as chartered financial analysts. Using their research on financial stability, market share and other factors, the teams recommend whether to buy, hold or sell the company’s stock. This year’s company for the Florida competition was Chico’s FAS, a group of three women’s apparel retailers.

“Part of our strategy was to find the most unique info about the company we could,” said senior finance major Rebecca Simmons, team captain. “We investigated the company and really dug deep to find info we didn’t think other schools would take the time to find.”

Top professional analysts critiqued written reports and judged team presentations and a question-and-answer session.

“We spent a lot of time practicing our presentation,” Simmons said. “We were able to speak naturally and never had to reference our power-point slides. We included a couple of jokes in our presentation – we wanted to make it as interesting as possible.”

Stetson’s student-managed portfolio team is part of its Roland George Investments Program in the School of Business Administration. George Investment students regularly win high honors at national competitions.

In addition to Simmons, of New Smyrna Beach,Fla., this year’s Team Stetson included Danny Trejo, Howey-in-the-Hills, finance and family enterprise double-major; Juncheng Lu, Chongqing, China, finance major; Gregory Bockhold, Sarasota, finance major; and Filip Vurdelja,Ostrow Wielkopoloski, Poland, finance major. Every member of the team, which was sponsored by the Central Florida CFA Society, is a member of the university’s Roland George Investments Program.

The other schools in the competition were UF, FSU, the University of North Florida, Florida Atlantic University and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Dr. K.C. Ma, a Roland George professor, team advisor and a CFA, accompanied the students to Winter Park and said the judges had high praise for Stetson’s students.

“Our team had a flawless presentation,” Ma said. “One judge mentioned afterward how polished Team Stetson was. He said the students never looked back once at their power-point during the presentation. He said he wished he’d had a place (on the scoring sheet) to give a grade for poise. He was so impressed.”

More than half the CFA’s 136 societies in 57 countries sponsor these competitions that involve more than 1,500 students from 425 universities around the world. Stetson and other top teams from North and South America will compete in the national competition in early April. Winners in that competition will advance to the global competition, which will include teams from Europe and Asia, the next day.

“So far it’s been really great,” Simmons said. “Dr. Ma has supported us and pushed us and taught us different ways to find information. We’ve learned a ton. We’ve spent hundreds of hours on the paper and the presentations, and it’s all paid off!”