#SoCaltech: Ethan Jaszewski
“Initially I got into the Caltech Student Investment Fund because I had a bunch of friends who went to meetings. I was a sophomore at the time, and I hadn’t really done any investing up to that point, so I came in with very little to no knowledge. Finance was something that had interested me for a while, though. I'm not exactly sure why, but maybe because it seems so mysterious. It even has its own language. From an analysis point of view, trying to understand why companies succeed or why they fail can teach you a lot about how the world works. Being involved with the fund has also forced me to set aside time to do something that I enjoy but maybe wouldn't have done otherwise given how busy Caltech students are. Our broad investment strategy is to just pick companies that we think are going to do well, though obviously that sounds rather nebulous. A lot of the investments in the portfolio now are companies whose products our members use on a daily basis, so obviously Apple and Amazon and Google are big pieces of the pie. And once the group investment discussion starts, it's about trying to figure out what it is about this company that makes it more successful than some other that we might pick. Why do we think it’s going to outperform the market? It’s easy to get fixated on checking the fund’s performance, but I try and restrict myself to looking maybe a couple times during the week. We don't really do anything without group input, so if something goes wrong in the middle of the week and I have to wait until the weekend to change it, that would be a bad source of stress.”
Ethan Jaszewski is a Caltech senior majoring in computer science. He is also president of the Caltech Student Investment Fund, which, in November 2020, passed the million-dollar mark (from an initial investment of $65,000 in 1978). The club meets weekly to hear and vote on investment ideas from members and spends up to 4 percent of its annual earnings on one-time or big-ticket purchases for student clubs.
#SoCaltech is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to magazine@caltech.edu.