Research Challenge

CFA Institute Research Challenge

The CFA Institute Research Challenge is an annual global competition that connects university students with investment professionals from within the CFA Society^® network. The competition provides students with hands-on mentoring and intensive training in financial analysis and ethics and tests participants' analytical, valuation, reporting writing, and presentation skills.

Members of our society, along with a faculty advisor and an industry mentor, work with teams of students to value a stock, write a research report, and present their recommendations. Teams then compete with peers from other schools at local-level competitions organized and judged by CFA Society members and volunteers. The winning university team(s) from each local competition then advances to see who will become the sub-regional, regional, and global champions.

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Local Research Challenge

CFA Society Iowa hosts a local Research Challenge every year. The Research Challenge is a competition between local universities and colleges to analyze a designated publicly traded company and present their findings to a panel of judges. The competition has several levels: local, sub-regional, regional semi-finals and global. As a local host of the challenge, it is up to us to determine the winning team among our local competitors. The winning team then moves on to the sub-regional competition.

The 2023 local challenge was held Thursday, Feb. 23 in downtown Des Moines. Five teams participated -- Grinnell College, Iowa State University, Loras College, University of Iowa, and University of Northern Iowa -- and the subject company was Sun Country Airlines. Congratulations to the team from Iowa State University for winning the local competition!