About Project Punch Card
Our goal at Project Punch Card is to encourage participation in the investment management and research field from the members of underrepresented groups like women and minorities.
Join us at the Project Punch Card launch event the Punch Card Conference in NYC.
Warren Buffett to students on the choice of a career:
When you go out in the world, look for the job you would take if you didn’t need the money. You really want to think about, what will make you feel good, when you get older, about your life, and you at least generally want to keep going in that direction. Don’t work for money . . . You’ll never be happy. You have to find the intersection of doing something you’re passionate about and at the same time something that is in the service of other people. I would argue that, if you don’t find that intersection, you’re not going to be very happy in life.
Why a punch card? Once again, the Oracle of Omaha said it best:
I could improve your ultimate financial welfare by giving you a ticket with only twenty slots in it so that you had twenty punches–representing all the investments that you got to make in a lifetime. And once you’d punched through the card, you couldn’t make any more investments at all. Under those rules, you’d really think carefully about what you did and you’d be forced to load up on what you’d really thought about. So you would do so much better.
Our Mission
Project Punch Card’s mission is to educate current and future professionals in the investment management and research industry, and to increase participation in the industry by people who are members of groups that are currently underrepresented, such as women, racial minorities, and people from low-income backgrounds. Project Punch Card’s educational activities aim to encourage people employed in (and students pursuing careers in) the investment management and research industry to adopt a long-term orientation when evaluating and making investments in their professional capacity. By focusing on professional investment research and management, rather than on personal financial education for individuals, Project Punch Card aims to promulgate the benefits of long-term investing to people who will be responsible for researching and managing investments for others.
To foster a long-term investing orientation, Project Punch Card conducts outreach to college and university students and current professionals. This outreach primarily consists of conferences and research contests. In the conferences, investors, authors, and other professionals (some of whom are members of underrepresented groups) speak about the investment process, about the value of a long-term investment orientation, and about their path through the industry. The audience of these conferences is made up both of current professionals and students aspiring to careers in the industry. In the research contests, students can learn about the investment process by researching and presenting long-term investment ideas to be judged by panels of experts, usually professional investment managers.
Investment Research Competition
Project Punch Card would like to set up an investment research competition amongst college and university students In this investment research competition, student teams will write an investment idea for the long-term (defined as five years or more). The student investment recommendations should be researched in a way that will identify businesses with superior long-term prospects. The design of holdings to be held for five years forces the analysts to think more deeply and behave more patiently than the standard stock-picking contests allow or encourage. Panels of judges made up of industry professionals will determine the winners. Potential partner schools and Institutions include [Fordham University, Smart Women Securities, Pace University, Rutgers University, Smith College, Wellesley College, Bryn Mawr College, Spelman College, Howard University, Hampton University, Tuskegee University, and Morehouse College.
