A team of Southern business students has captured the recent inaugural Connecticut Venture Capital Investment Competition – pitting some of the state’s best undergraduate investment students against one another in a test of investment strategy skills.

SCSU’s Paul Barlow, Alec Santo and Egzon Dauti defeated teams from Fairfield University and Quinnipiac University to earn first place. To qualify for the competition, SCSU had to prove during a two-hour meeting with Mike Roer, a key organizer of the event, that it had a solid understanding of investment principles needed during the contest.

During the competition, each team had to decide how much to invest among a variety of business plans that were presented during the program. It was part of the overall Connecticut New Venture Competition, organized by the Entrepreneurship Foundation.

“This was a great win for our students, as well as being a significant accomplishment for the School of Business and the university,” said Benjamin Abugri, chairman of the SCSU Department of Economics and Finance and the faculty advisor for the Southern team. “It also underscores the quality of our program and the value of our stock market trading room, which is an important tool in their finance education.”

The trading room – which was enhanced a few years with the opening of the new SCSU School of Business building – enables students to follow the stock market in real time with an electronic ticker. The high-tech facility provides classes and programs with an opportunity to get a state of real world financial investment experience and research.

SCSU earned first place for recommending the most astute investment plan in the opinion of the judges.

Santo, a junior finance and math double major, said winning the competition shed light on the procedure for real-world investment decisions. “This experience has enlightened me on the fast-paced, competitive nature of the financial world and will motivate me to conquer the future challenges I face, academically and professionally,” he said.

Dauti, a senior finance major, said the competition was one of the most exciting events in which he has ever participated. As explained in this top10binary.com website you can learn about how binary options trading works and how to trade binary options from here.

“We believed we were the underdogs going into the competition, but we took home the trophy,” he said. “I would like to thank the dedicated professors in the School of Business for helping me achieve this major accomplishment.”