The Rice On-Line Investment Club:
Rice's First Entirely On-Line Student Organization

[ Why ROIC? | Our Aims | The Ultimate Goal | The People ]

With the growth of the internet as a source of information, the financial world has become far less daunting. We see sixteen-year-old kids as well as retired grandparents trading with their E-Trade accounts, buying shares of high-flying companies like Qualcomm and Yahoo, and we think to ourselves—why is everyone getting rich but me? The internet has empowered the masses, and a proper knowledge of investing can help us all achieve financial independence. It is with this spirit that we start the Rice Online Investment Club.

Let us make it clear at first that we do not at all aim to be the Rice Day Trading Club. We don’t want you all to squander all your savings on penny stocks that some internet bulletin board predicts will shoot through the roof. Investing is a tale of risk—and we aim to educate about all types of investments, from the high-risk, high-yield options to the government bonds and T-bills.

What are our aims in the club? First and foremost, our goal is to educate—close to half of our efforts as an organization will be to teach Rice students about financial markets. There is no doubt that Rice students are brilliant, but a lot of us are either scared of taking a gamble in the market and losing or just don’t think we are educated enough to invest. We believe that by creating a community of students who are educated about markets and investing, there will be a free-flow of information, and ultimately, "a marketplace of ideas." Which brings us to our second main goal—to network people. The internet’s most powerful capability is as a means of communications. Rice University is an especially great place to establish such a network. We can all benefit from each other’s perspectives and conclusions. We are just facilitators in this "marketplace of ideas." We will maintain a message board and send out listserv emails, but the main extent of the work for the club comes from an active process. It is all learning by doing. We plan to have online investment challenges with play money so that people can take a hand at investing in the market. We plan to develop an extensive means of educating people, from the most basic levels, about what a market is and how to place an order. Rice students, like most learners in the prime of their lives, grasp things quickly. For some, the learning process will be quicker than others. We plan to post research, encourage information flow, and educate people into investing.

So, what is the ultimate goal, you may ask—how will education lead to financial success? We are starting from the ground up, and we are just as strong as we work to be. Being an entirely online club makes us different from any other organization at Rice in two ways. Primarily, membership in the club is all based on personal motivation. You can be a member of the club at 3 AM after coming back from reading Physics in the library; you just need to go to the website. Secondly, the financial world is behind us. This site will feature tons of research from companies around the Street, and will hopefully ultimately contain an internship exchange for the financial world. In short, if we can build an informed community of students whose knowledge of investing is constantly growing, financial knowledge will lead to financial prosperity.

Also…it’s a "good way to meet people."

Please sign up. We are always under construction and are just getting started.

Vishnu Kurella, Co-Founder, vkurella@rice.edu
Rohan Varavadekar, Co-Founder, rohanv@wharton.upenn.edu

2000-2001 Officers

Brian O'Malley, President, bomalley@rice.edu
Nick Zolas, Treasurer, nzolas@rice.edu
Jamie Liang, Co-CTO, jsliang@rice.edu
Mohith Julapalli, Co-CTO, mohith@rice.edu
Neel Singhal, Co-CIO, neel@rice.edu
Charlene Sadberry, Co-CIO, sadberry@rice.edu