Greetings from beautiful South Bend, Indiana! The University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business is excited to be a part of CNBC’s MBA Face-Off. We have a team of students assembled from the first and second year classes of Mendoza’s Two-Year MBA program supplemented by a few classmates from the rigorous One-Year MBA program (click on the “Schools” tab to view our individual profiles).
So what’s up with the markets this week? We exited the weekend worrying about Greece (again) and anxiously attempting to trade a mid-week Fed announcement (again). Fortunately, NFLX provided a much needed distraction early Monday morning. Hey Reed, if you had to change the name doesn’t “Qwikflix” make a little more sense? If it helps you feel better, we suspect that AAPL, AMZN and about 25 other tech and media companies sincerely accept your apology, even if some customers do not. In Mr. Hastings defense, renaming the familiar does seem to be the trend these days, even at the Fed. Bernanke to FOMC: “We can’t call it QE3… QE is played out… how about… ‘Operation TWIST!?’”
But returning to the MBA Face-Off, we’ve come up with three primary goals (in order of importance): 1) Crush Michigan, 2) Get a shout-out on CNBC’s “Mad Money” from the legend himself, Jim Cramer and 3) Win. We’ve also decided that the best way to achieve each of these goals is to invest well, which means we’ll need a great investment strategy—and probably good luck as well. We here at Notre Dame, however, don’t want to bore our readers (some of whom may be our esteemed competitors) with a detailed explanation of that strategy. Suffice it to say we intend on capturing maximum upside volatility while minimizing downside risk, although we seem to be taking a cue from the Irish football team at the moment in starting slow.
Nonetheless, the next 10 weeks should be interesting, and we’re thrilled that CNBC invited Notre Dame along for the ride.