Ingenjörskapital or IK (formerly I Capital Management) was refounded in 2021, thus establishing the first student run investment fund at KTH. The organization is a student society adhering to the chapter of Industrial Engineering & Management at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The organization manages the long-term savings for the chapter and is entirely run by elected student-members at the chapter.
Our primary mission is to outperform the OMXS30 over any 2-year period, secondarily, but just as importantly, ingenjörskapital aims to provide a rich learning environment for all members in the organization.
It has become clear to many that the financial industry, and more broadly the financial system desperately needs to be restructured under sounder mechanisms and principles. This change will be technologically enabled and will therefore be driven by engineers. In my opinion enabling a truly scalable and trustless monetary and financial system is a collection of some of the most important engineering problems of the century. This, alongside many other reasons, is why it is important that institutions such as KTH has a space where engineers can be introduced to, learn about, and be engaged with the financial world during their time of study.
Gorm Henriksen
Co-Founder, President 21-22
A Quality which is desperately lacking in the financial industry. In fact almost all capital management business models relies upon not sharing the asset / intellectual property that is research. In a world where more and more (especially young) people are taking it upon themselves to manage their private funds, access to research is very important. Learning is central to Ingenjörskapital and we want to extend this mission to everyone. Therefore we open source all of our research, written reports as well as complete financial models, all made freely available.
We don't settle for second-rate research, all that we do is done in our utmost capacity to thoroughly analyze and communicate our ideas. There is such a thing as diminishing returns and certainly no valuation of a business is "perfect". When we decide to invest in an equity we are therefore acutely aware that the research that led to the decision always will diverge from reality. Therefore we always attempt to establish a margin of safety, that within reasonable doubt ensures that any error of analysis/prediction does not jeopardize the investment case significantly.
We don't just define sustainability as our core value because it is the "talk of the town" and we might not see eye to eye with everyone in what sustainability ought to entail. We approach sustainability by requiring all of our investments to fail the question: Is the investment in question a detriment to a bright future for humanity? How we decide to approach this question is discretionary to the judgement of management.
Ingenjörskapital is one of the most work intensive societies at the section, but the hard work that our members put in pays off. During your time at Ingenjörskapital you can expect to learn how to analyze and value any business that you come across, this is a skillset that will set you miles apart from your peers, if work in the financial industry or in entrepreneurial endeavors are of interest.
The skills that you develop at IK are not limited in application to the financial industry. You will during your work analyzing businesses develop some of the most fundamental skills required for any intellectual endeavor, the ability to analyze, the skill of presenting your case in writing and the skill of presenting your findings verbally. Something that is very important here at IK is that we strive to maximize the intellectual freedom of choice for all of our members, therefore our members (after initial training) are free to decide exactly what they want to research during their time at IK, so long as it is deemed productive for the purposes of the fund. Members are expected to be able to work independently / in smaller groups under guidance of more senior members.
We expect our members to work actively for 5 hours a week on average, with periods of slightly elevated and periods of a semi-suspended (during examination-periods) "workload", however the goal is that the work isn't perceived as a load.
Our members are to be respectful, have integrity, and they are expected to showcase a fervent interest and seriousness of work in whatever they decide to delve into during their time at IK. We strongly encourage our members to have "skin in the game", i.e. that they themselves manage some of their own savings privately. Furthermore it is encouraged that all our equity analysts only issue buy recommendation for equities if they themselves have decided to invest in the perceived opportunity.
Since management of capital is a central topic we strongly discourage any and all members to talk about the quantities of capital that they may manage privately. Mainly because we want to establish a certain equality within the organization in this respect.
Collectively the management democratically makes all the investment decisions for the fund. Management consists of the following roles:
Is elected by the chapter, at the chapter event "SM4". The President has the ultimate responsibility of assuring that the organization fulfills its two primary missions; namely that the fund hits its performance target and that the members in IK are satisfied with their experience in the organization. Furthermore the President is responsible for ensuring that all members are meeting the standard that is expected of them as members of the organization. The President also has veto power in the investment decision process.
Is elected internally amongst members in the organization by the President. The VP is to be the "right hand man" of the President and are to work very close with the President in all matters.
Board Members play a crucial role in providing guidance and support to the organization. They are selected based on their expertise and ability to contribute to the organization’s objectives. Their responsibilities include, but are not limited to, offering strategic advice on investment decisions and organizational direction, assisting in the evaluation of fund performance and member satisfaction, and facilitating connections and partnerships that can benefit the organization. Members of the Board are expected to be actively involved in discussions and to provide insights that help shape the organization’s future.
The objective is to provide the chapter with a relatively stable long-term source of returns, in line with OMXS30.
The nature of the fund is quite simplistic, it is a long-only actively managed fund. Long-only means that we only engage in purchasing ownership of assets, such as businesses, commodities & currencies, other contracts such as short-contracts and options are currently not utilized.
It should be emphasized that the first-mentioned asset class (ownership of businesses/equities/stocks) is of primary interest, by far. What might be unique for a student investment fund is that IK is actively managed, which simply means that positions can be changed at any time. There are four main perspectives from which we make "rebalancing" decisions (decisions to increase/decrease size of a certain investment):
As advertised, we strive to be transparent with our investment activity, which is why all changes in positions and assumption of brand new positions are shared here on the website. Furthermore all of our current holdings, past performance and statistics of our portfolio are made available for all to see.
Each year Ingenjörskapital proposes a new "allocation policy" in front of the Chapter. The policy is then negotiated in the democratic process and when the policy has been selected IK is bound to abide by the policy document in it's investment activity.
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