A startup venture needs not only money but people—well-connected players in the startup community who can quickly put their hands on expertise, connections and, yes, cash. In 2009, not long after the U.S. economy had slowed to a halt, Ted Zoller, director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at UNC-Kenan Flagler, saw that new ventures were needed more than ever. “But everyone was ducking for cover,” he said. “I thought, ‘How do we get things moving again?’ I decided we needed to hearken back to those people who have brokered multiple ventures. We needed to find those people and motivate them to get involved again.” So Zoller began developing his “dealmaker’s algorithm.” It’s software that mines from Standard and Poor’s Read More
Category Archives: Investing
Hot search words on Google can reveal hot investments, new research finds
02/22/2011 – 8:34 am
Hot search words, captured in tools like Google Trends or Yahoo’s “Trending Now” feature, typically point to juicy celebrity gossip, breaking news headlines or idle interests of the web-browsing masses. For instance, on the morning of Jan. 16, during a weekend that brought revolution in Tunisia and continued coverage of the Tucson shooting that seriously injured U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, eight of the top 10 searches on Google were related to Miss America 2011, who had been crowned the night before. But popular search terms can also reveal hot investments, finds UNC Kenan-Flagler finance professor Joey Engelberg. In recent studies, Engelberg discovered that stock ticker symbols searched for frequently on Google can forecast a bump in the company’s share price Read More
Hedge fund pioneer Julian Roberston on his investment philosophy
09/27/2010 – 7:11 am
Julian H. Robertson Jr. (BSBA ‘55) is chairman and CEO of Tiger Management LLC. From initial capital of $8 million, Robertson built Tiger into the world’s largest hedge fund with capital of more than $23 billion. Tiger compounded at a gross rate of 31.5 percent between its founding in 1980 and its closing in 2000. Robertson also trained and developed a generation of “Tiger Cubs,” a cadre of analysts and portfolio managers who have become some of today’s most successful hedge fund managers. Today, Robertson maintains Tiger to manage his own investments and to seed independent hedge funds. Robertson spoke to UNC Business magazine about the recent recession and his investment philosophy. What do you think were the core causes Read More