For two St. Joe’s finance majors, what began as a shared interest in following the financial world has developed into a new club on campus.
Jacob Peifer ’25 and Joseph Vigliotta ’24 founded the SJU Investment Club this semester. The club will officially kick off in the fall, but an interest meeting held March 3 drew 62 students so far.
Peifer said he and Vigliotta wanted to create a place where students of all majors and class years could work together to research the stock market and invest funds.
“The only opportunity [for investing] was the upperclassmen-only state-managed fund,” Peifer said. “So we wanted to make a club that would be accessible to everyone and teach about investing.”
Although the club will focus primarily on investing and finances, it will also provide educational resources and meetings available for newcomers. Nearly two-thirds of the students who initially expressed interest in the club said they have little to no experience in investing, Vigliotta said.
“We’re going to have a couple segments in our meetings to explain the strategies we use,” Vigliotta said. “We also have resources to what we use, how we do things, what fundamental technical analysis are, and ultimately, we’re going to try to have guest speakers come in and teach their own strategies too.”
In a typical investment club, members contribute a set sum of money for the club to use. After that, they meet periodically to discuss which stocks should or should not be invested in. For now, the SJU Investment Club intends on following a similar model while maintaining a profit on paper training and fake money. The founders also plan to divide the members into eleven sector teams and allocate funds based on the stocks the teams have presented, Vigliotta said.
Jonathan Adams, visiting professor of finance and the club’s faculty advisor, said the club will provide a platform for not only understanding how to invest prudently but also developing key life skills.
“From a very practical standpoint, the vast majority of students that are going to university today will, at some point in their career, face questions of how to invest funds,” Adams said. “From that very practical standpoint, anyone who comes into this club will have a taste of how to make those decisions … [and] refine those skills.”
Peifer and Vigliotta said they hope the club will eventually be able to obtain outside funding so that at one point they can invest real money.
“It just seems to get people motivated, keep people engaged and make it fun,” Peifer said. “Everyone likes to play games and everyone likes money.”
