Guest column: Scheel Fund regroups after turbulent summer

The following guest column is sponsored content from the Scheel Fund. 

The Scheel Fund is an on-campus investing club that meets once a week in the finance lab. Each week we discuss our portfolio and noteworthy news in the United States and global economies. Our leadership team this year consists of Isaac Johnson, Kevin Ness, and Devon Ramstad.  

The Scheel Fund emphasizes investing with ESG in mind. ESG stands for environmental, social, and governmental and companies are rated based off criteria such as how the company interacts with the environment or their shareholders. With such a focus on sustainability at Concordia, the Scheel Fund wants to show an equal interest on sustainably investing. 

Heading into the summer, the Scheel Fund held about $195,000 in holdings and cash. After a very volatile spring due to several macroeconomic implications, we are currently fluctuating around $165,000. Global conflict between Russia and Ukraine has caused significant Overall, our portfolio performed comparably to the market as a whole.  

Investors are not a fan of uncertainty, and the United States economy has provided plenty so far in 2022. With record high inflation rates the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates quickly; in fact, they are raising rates faster than has been done in over forty years. This increases the cost of capital which will likely cause more volatility and possibly further devaluation in the markets. This has a direct impact on students through the financing of student loans at higher interest rates. 

One holding that we have sold this year is Twilio. Twilio is a software company that has been hit hard by the overall market. Initially we invested in them because technology stocks had been one of the fastest growing sectors for a while. That changed quickly and they became one of our big losers recently as the market began valuing current earnings more than projected growth. Because of this, the fund decided to cut losses and get rid of our position in Twilio.  

One position we have bought shares in this year is Adobe. Adobe is another software company that just acquired their biggest competitor, Figma, earlier this month. Along with this, we have been focusing on investing mainly in companies that are aware of their and society’s impact on the environment. Some of these companies include Sunnova, a renewable energy company focusing on solar power, and Weyerhaeuser which is a real estate company focusing on timberlands.