Philosophy

The Oxford Alpha Fund adopts a fundamental-driven, bottom-up approach to investment ideas that considers both individual company analysis and industry-level dynamics. Primarily focused on quality compounders that exhibit resilience, and companies with a long runway for growth at a fair valuation, we develop in-depth research, supported by proprietary financial models built by our analysts. We adopt an Oxonian approach toward investing, prioritising academic rigour, first-principle thinking, and a deep-dive approach toward research, seeking out qualitative and quantitative sources of information that might be overlooked by the Street.

Process

Led by a more experienced portfolio manager, teams collectively choose an industry that they are interested in, based on their unique make-up and diverse research leanings. Teams are typically composed of a mix of graduate and undergraduate students with varied backgrounds in science, humanities and finance. Teams perform industry-level analysis on two attractive themes within an industry - splitting up into two sub-industry team, justifying their choice of sub-sector and identifying and common drivers in each industry. The teams then determine the most attractive stocks to long/short, and work on the names individually or in pairs, developing a framework to relatively compare these stocks. The fund then holds a pitch day every term, where our best ideas are pitched to a panel of industry veterans. The panel judges our pitches – providing us mentorship and refining our ideas. Past panellists include investors from J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Fidelity International, Capital Group, Nevsky Capital, and Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Our reports are then published and circulated to our research partners.

PROGRAMME

The fund meets several times each term, bookended by our termly industry and stock pitches. Each industry team meets at their own time, typically once or twice a week to develop their models and refine their theses. We also invite high-profile industry veterans to share their experiences, host investment roundtables, and company workshops. In addition, we conduct our flagship investing bootcamp in Michaelmas Term every year - supported by our alumni network, research partners and sponsors.

Introduction to Investing

In Trinity Term 2023, our team conducted an interview on an Introduction to Fundamental Investing with Mansi Agrawal, an analyst at Point72, one of our sponsor firms. Check out the interview here.