Members of the Loyola SIF—the Student Investment Fund—have reportedly assured that the school doesn’t have to worry about repeating such a rare feat for at least 100 years. Using the entirety of the endowment, the student-managed finance organization successfully reduced its portfolio to zero over the course of two busy days last week.
SIF leaders have indicated they lost the money due to a “high-conviction” strategy in which members consolidated the fund’s holdings into a few investments that “sounded right at the time.”
“We didn’t want to overthink it and second-guess ourselves,” Charlie Levenick ’27 said. “At a certain point, you just have to trust your instincts and stop looking at the numbers and the data.”
Those strong and confident instincts reportedly led the fund into several declining stocks, a cryptocurrency described as a “basically guaranteed hit and one-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” and what members called a “short-term, high-risk play” that, according to meeting notes, was based primarily on a stock someone saw on their TikTok feed and has since become increasingly difficult for anyone present to explain in concrete terms.
AP Economics teacher Brian Held ’93 began to raise concerns as the fund’s value dropped rapidly but was reassured by the group’s confidence.
“They kept saying it was a temporary dip,” Kai Beck ’27 said. “At some point, I realized the dip was the entire chart!”
Despite the outcome, SIF members maintain a positive attitude about the future and say they have already identified what went wrong and what to do next.
As punishment for their actions, administrators confirmed that SIF members would be required to attend a mandatory financial literacy course, where they would manage a simulated paper-money portfolio using the exact same strategy “until they get it right.”
