The holdings of the Student Investment Fund have grown significantly over time, reaching over $600,000 in cash and investments by the end of the 2016 fiscal year. The percent of our portfolio held in liquid assets varies depending on the perceived volatility of the market, apparent investment opportunities, and the perceived need to allow room for new investment. Because the Fund is prohibited from participating in investment activities that might allow for unlimited losses, including shorting stocks, we tend to focus on investment in companies where we can expect a large amount of upside growth, both in the near and long term.

Our investments tend to consist primarily of stock holdings, and due to the increased availability of information we like to invest primarily in large and mid cap companies. Due to the expertise of the Caltech community in technology and innovative research, roughly 40% of our investments are in the Tech and Biomedical sectors. The remaining 60% of our portfolio is invested in a variety of sectors and industries, in an effort to create a well balanced and diversified portfolio. While we do not publicly publish our exact holdings, more information is available to members of the Caltech community upon request.

In an effort to further the learning experience provided by the Student Investment Fund, we have recently started exploring the world of Quantitative Finance. We view this relatively recent advance in investing technology as an opportunity to take advantage of Caltech's expertise in technology and computation, and demonstrate to members of the Caltech community the applications of these skills in the financial sector. While we have not as of yet made this a large part of our portfolio management strategy, we are looking into various ways we can apply this growing branch of finance to our investment plans. Weekly meetings focusing on quantitative finance are held weekly in Cahill conference room 312, from 5-6 PM on Mondays.

While we are currently exploring various tools we can use to explore quantitative finance, the tools we have so far found to be the most useful are Quantiacs and Quantopian