Slug Fund Investment Group is launching UCSC's first student-run investment fund.
UC Santa Cruz has always been a place where students take initiative and build what does not already exist. That shows up across disciplines, and it is especially clear among students interested in finance. The curiosity is there, the work ethic is there, and the ambition is there, but the path forward is often fragmented. Technical training, professional certifications, and early exposure to real decision-making are all critical, yet they are often expensive or difficult to access. What has been missing is not talent, but a structure that connects students to real opportunity in a consistent and scalable way.
At UCLA and UC Berkeley, students manage real money, with clubs in place since 1987 and 1997, respectively. Berkeley Investment Group (BIG) manages ~$140,000, and UCLA’s Student Investment Fund (SIF) manages over $4 million. Following in those footsteps, we are forming a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to actively help support the student body at UCSC. SFIG will be able to extend our mission through more educational opportunities, exam subsidies, and practical investment experience.
Since 2016, Slug Fund Investment Group (SFIG) has been an education-focused investment club, tracking stock news, hosting paper-trading competitions, and teaching about the markets. We’ve begun a biweekly guest speaker series featuring founders and fund managers from Y Combinator, UC Investments, and HummingBot. This year, for the first time at UCSC, we are doing something different. Our mission is to establish a foundation: an actively traded permanent endowment, managed by students.
Through this initiative and our new partnership with the CFA Society, our mission is to provide sustainable and relevant resources to our students. With our continued partnership with UC Investments Academy, our organization will continue to provide more materials to students to not only support educational opportunities, but also provide material that translates directly to exams and certification programs to advance careers. In addition to our new educational opportunities, SFIG will be able to provide merit-based subsidized licensing fees for industry certifications (Series 65, CFA prep), access to professional-grade research tools, and build a pipeline of resources that outlasts any single cohort.
Lastly, with the addition of our newly established nonprofit comes our new endowment. This endowment will be completely student-run with oversight from industry professionals. The goal is to give students real experience in finance and bring competitive fire to UCSC. The process is meant to mimic investment firms. Teams will work together to find value using technical research tools, including SlugTerminal, a UCSC-developed investment platform inspired by Bloomberg, draft professional-grade investment plans, and present them at the end of each quarter.
At our core, SFIG has been about providing opportunities to students to advance their careers in finance. Today, our mission has changed to actively support our student body and break the barriers for all students, regardless of major or background experience, to break into financial opportunities.
If you are interested in supporting the initiative, you can find more information here
Join the mailing list to get involved here.
