Fidelity Investments Presents the Week 9 Leaderboard

Leaderboard Presented by Fidelity Investments!

One week remains in the Spring 2017 ETF Global® Portfolio Challenge and consistent with this semester’s trend, there was a sharp repositioning of our week-to-week leaderboard. Amid escalating market volatility, week 9 transpired in an environment that magnified gains and losses in our participants’ portfolios. Those well-positioned to weather this heightened volatility were rewarded, while some with riskier bets lost ground this week. See below for how things stand as we approach the final week of the Spring 2017 ETF Global® Portfolio Challenge.

Week 9 (4/14-4/21):

Name	School	Return
Ethan O’Donnell	St. John Fisher College	21.51%
Cole Smith	St. John Fisher College	19.82%
Phat Huynh	St. John Fisher College	18.65%
Carlin Lydon	St. John Fisher College	17.81%
John Lehsten	St. John Fisher College	16.84%
Sagar Jain Prabhakar	University of Manitoba	15.60%
Steven Barber	Rochester Institute of Technology	15.37%
David Irizarry	University of Puerto Rio – Rio Piedras	13.46%
Michael Usherovich	Wilfrid Laurier University	13.34%
Kyle Reid	St. John Fisher College	12.81%

This week’s key takeaways – St. John Fisher College broke another milestone and continues its unprecedented run, as it represented all 5 of our students in the top 5 this week! Ethan O’Donnell reclaimed the top spot in our leaderboard and SJFC also had a sixth student in this week’s top 10 to boot. Sagar Jain Prabhakar from University of Manitoba, David Irizarry from University of Puerto Rio – Rio Piedras, and Michael Usherovich from Wilfrid Laurier University all performed well this week and maintained their positions in the top 10. Kyle Reid from SJFC and Steven Barber from Rochester Institute of Technology outperformed this week and both made their returns to the top 10.

Geopolitical tensions and waning economic optimism unleashed volatility and spurred a rally in safe haven assets this week. Not surprisingly, our top 10 leaders were well-positioned for this environment with allocations to traditional haven assets, like fixed-income and gold. Positions in the VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX), PowerShares DB Gold Fund DB Gold Inx Fund (DGL), SPDR Gold Trust (GLD), iShares Gold Trust (IAU), Vanguard Intermediate-Term Corporate Bond Index Fund (VCIT), Vanguard Short-Term Bond Index Fund (BSV) and AdvisorShares Pacific Asset Enhanced Floating Rate ETF (FLRT) helped our leaders navigate the choppy waters in this week’s markets. Some of our leaders also benefited from the rise in volatility by being long VIX products, such as the VelocityShares VIX Short-Term ETN (VIIX) and VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX Short-Term ETN (TVIX). Attesting to the diligence and savviness of our contestants, a couple of leaders held positions in funds far outside the mainstream, like Teucrium Soybean Fund (SOYB) and PowerShares Water Resources Portfolio (PHO). Allocations to these more esoteric funds underscores the tremendous amount of research our contestants put in to the portfolio challenge.

We are entering the final week of the Spring 2017 ETF Global® Portfolio Challenge and will be eagerly awaiting to see who finishes on top. Follow us on our website – etfportfoliochallenge.com – or blog – blog.etfg.com – to stay up-to-date and see what students are crowned the winners of the Spring competition!

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