Welcome back! To kick off the new semester, Co-Presidents Alec Cwienkala ’21 and Noah Grossman ’21 gave a brief overview of the club and introduced the Executive Board.
Next, Vice President Connor Thatcher ’21 provided an introduction to equity markets and explained what it means when someone says that the “stock market was up today”. When companies need to raise money, they have 2 options, Debt or Equity. If the company chooses to issue equity, they can do so through an Initial Public Offering (IPO). The public can now purchase shares of the company, with each share representing ownership of a fraction of the corporation. These shares are then bought and sold on “stock exchanges” such as the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq. Today there are roughly 600,000+ publicly traded companies globally. However, when someone refers to the “Stock Market” they are usually referring to one of the Stock Indices which includes the S&P 500, DJIA, and the NASDAQ. The S&P 500, for example, measures the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.
Chairman of the Board Parth Patel ’21 presented on the current state of the oil and natural gas markets and also analyzed how the winter storm emergencies in Texas are affecting the market. Oil prices have reached 13-month highs as concerns that the brutal winter weather in Texas will affect oil output in the United States. These concerns have motivated investors to buy energy futures. Oil’s recent rally has also been due to OPEC supply cuts, but analysts are also hopeful that oil prices will continue to rise with impending US stimulus and the continued rollout of the Covid-19 Vaccine.
Congratulations to the winners of our winter stock market game! Max Hook ’23, Josh Zhou ’21, and Sam Klearman ’21 broke down their unique trading strategies for the club.
Thank you to everyone who showed up on Friday, and we look forward to seeing everyone again next week. We will also be having our first open Board Meeting of the year on Tuesday at 12:20, the meeting link will be posted in the GroupMe.