This isn’t a book filled with gossip and conjecture, but rather a book filled with facts, and many of the facts are incredible. In their new book, Applied Portfolio Management: How University of Kansas Students Generate Alpha to Beat the Street (John Wiley and Sons, April 2008) School of Business faculty Catherine Shenoy and Kent C. McCarthy explain the critical skills it takes to become a financial analyst and an active stock investor.
In the book, faculty use examples from class research and actual results of the Applied Portfolio Management (APM) program at the KU School of Business to teach readers the fundamentals of valuation and investing. The real world experience of APM students’ management of investments led to a performance track record that even the pros would envy.
“The students have earned an annual average return over 20 percent since 1994 when the Applied Portfolio Management program was founded, blowing away the NASDAQ’s average nine percent over the same period,” said Professor Catherine Shenoy. “We wrote the book to show investors the process that the class goes through to research a stock. The publisher thought that if a group of students could generate exceptional returns, that was a story that should be told.”
In addition to drawing attention to success of APM students at the KU School of Business, 50 percent of royalties from sale of this book will be returned to the University of Kansas.
Shenoy believes that her APM students have beaten the market by “getting close to the information,” or learning how to value and dissect the performance of public companies.
APM students at KU learn the process of portfolio management under the wings of a tremendously successful investor, Kent C. McCarthy, who first launched the course while on sabbatical from Goldman Sachs.
McCarthy’s extensive and varied experience enriches the book’s chapter “Investing in China” and the chapter “Local Investing,” which focuses on companies in Kansas and Missouri. Companies include Capitol-Federal Savings, Garmin Industries, Kansas City Southern, Tortoise Capital Advisors and Inergy Holdings.
The APM course at KU is unique, and this book teaches readers all the essential skills that business students learn in the classroom to be successful portfolio managers. Students learn how to dig behind the façade of public numbers, press releases and spin to figure out what’s really going on within companies and markets. Readers can also follow the APM class and its actual investment portfolio online at www.business.ku.edu/apm
The new book is available online from the publisher and will soon be available in local book stores. Telephone orders may be placed by calling 1-800-225-5945.
About the Authors:
Catherine Shenoy, PhD, MBA (Lawrence, Kan.) is Director of the Applied Portfolio Management program at the University of Kansas School of Business. She has worked for the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Service Officer in Washington, D.C., and Tunis, Tunisia. Since 1993, she has taught accounting, statistics, and finance at the University of Kansas. Shenoy’s research areas include corporate governance, corporate financial policies, and applications of artificial intelligence to portfolio analysis.
Kent McCarthy, MBA, CPA (Incline Village, Nev.) is President and Chief Investment Officer of Jayhawk Capital Management. In 1994, he retired from Goldman Sachs, returned to Kansas, and founded the Applied Portfolio Management class, working closely with Shenoy. McCarthy taught the class full-time until 1995, when he founded Jayhawk Capital Management, which manages hedge funds and private equity funds primarily focused on the Chinese equity markets. He continues as an Executive Lecturer in the APM class.
