Real Projects, Real Learning

Sometimes the best way to understand market behavior is to watch it happen in real time. Our student-led research projects bring investment terminology to life through collaborative analysis and peer-driven exploration.

Learning Through Doing

Books can only take you so far. When you're trying to wrap your head around concepts like dividend yield or market capitalization, it helps to see them in action.

Our students form small research groups each semester—typically four to six people—and pick a market sector to analyze together. Maybe it's renewable energy companies, or tech startups, or regional banks. The choice is theirs.

What makes this work is the peer dynamic. When someone finds an interesting pattern in earnings reports, they bring it to the group. Questions fly. Ideas get challenged. And slowly, the terminology starts making sense because everyone's wrestling with the same data.

Students collaborating on financial research projects

What Actually Happens

These projects run for eight weeks during fall and winter terms. Groups meet twice weekly—once with their mentor, once on their own. Here's what that looks like in practice.

Week 1-2: Finding Focus

Groups pick their sector and start gathering baseline data. This phase is messier than you'd think—learning what questions to ask takes time. Mentors help narrow the scope to something manageable.

Week 3-5: Deep Dive

Now everyone's tracking specific companies, comparing balance sheets, and mapping out trends. The terminology from class suddenly has context. P/E ratios aren't abstract anymore when you're comparing three different firms.

Week 6-8: Synthesis

Groups compile their findings into a research presentation. Not polished marketing material—just honest analysis of what they found, what surprised them, and what still doesn't make sense. The presentation happens in front of other groups, which keeps things grounded.

Henrik Lundqvist

Project Mentor

Henrik spent fifteen years analyzing mid-cap companies for institutional investors before joining our program in 2023. He doesn't lecture much—mostly asks questions that make students rethink their assumptions.

"I tell them upfront: you're going to make wrong calls. That's the point. Better to misread a balance sheet here than in a real portfolio later." His groups tend to pick challenging sectors—healthcare, emerging markets—because he's comfortable saying 'I don't know' and figuring it out together.

Students from his 2024 cohort still email him questions. That's probably the best measure of whether this approach works.

Two Tracks, Same Goal

Research Focus

Some groups lean toward traditional analysis—pulling data from annual reports, tracking historical performance, building models to predict future behavior.

This track suits students who like structure. There's a clear methodology, established tools, and a lot of precedent for what constitutes thorough research.

Quantitative analysis using public financial data
Comparative valuation across similar companies
Historical trend identification and pattern recognition
Risk assessment frameworks

Qualitative Exploration

Other groups go qualitative—analyzing management interviews, studying competitive positioning, or examining how regulatory changes might affect their sector.

This is less formulaic. Students develop their own frameworks and defend their reasoning. It requires more interpretation but often surfaces insights the numbers alone don't show.

Management quality assessment through public communications
Competitive landscape mapping
Regulatory impact analysis
Market sentiment tracking

From Confusion to Clarity

Students presenting their investment research findings

The Learning Curve

First-time participants usually hit a wall around week four. The data stops making sense, or their initial thesis falls apart. This is where peer support matters most—someone else in the group has probably figured out the piece you're missing.

By week seven, most groups have that moment where everything clicks. Not because they've become experts, but because they've built enough context to see how the pieces fit together.

What Comes After

The fall 2025 cohort kicks off in September. Winter term runs January through March 2026. Applications open about six weeks before each term starts.

Space is limited to maintain small group sizes—we cap enrollment at forty students per term. If you're interested, reach out early. And come ready to be wrong a few times. That's where the actual learning happens.

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