CFA Research Challenge

About the Competition

The CFA Institute Research Challenge is an annual global competition connecting university students with investment professionals 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.

CFA members, 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.

To know more about the competition, click here

This year competition (2024)

We are pleased to inform you that the CFA Institute has started the eleventh edition of the Research Challenge – Portuguese Edition.

The target company for this year’s edition is CTT-CORREIOS DE PORTUGAL, SA (ticker – CTT).

On 19th September, at 5:30 PM, an ONLINE OPENING SESSION of the Research Challenge will take place. This session will be led by the CFA Institute-Portugal team and will have an estimated duration of less than 30 minutes. The Zoom link for the online presentation session is as follows: https://zoom.us/j/91811410052 (Meeting ID: 918 1141 0052).

In addition to FEP, thirteen other higher education institutions have accepted the invitation to participate in this edition of the competition, namely:

  • Católica Porto Business School;
  • Coimbra Business School;
  • School of Economics and Management of the University of Minho;
  • Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences of the Portuguese Catholic University;
  • Faculty of Economics of the Nova University of Lisbon;
  • Higher Institute of Labour and Business Sciences;
  • Higher Institute of Accounting and Administration of Lisbon;
  • Higher Institute of Accounting and Administration of Porto;
  • Higher Institute of Economics and Management;
  • University of Algarve;
  • University of Aveiro;
  • University of Coimbra;
  • Portucalense University.

The Winning Team in Portugal will compete at a global level.

The registration of all team members must be done by October 20th through the following link: https://global.cfainstituteevents.org/event/bd357632-2a86-48b3-bfed-a24c2693da33/summary

Teams can consist of students from various academic years and different courses, if you wish.

The Faculty Advisor for the Research Challenge at FEP is Professor Fábio Duarte (fduarte@fep.up.pt) from the Finance section, who is naturally available to clarify any questions and to participate in some sessions to guide your work (report).

The current competition schedule is as follows:

  • Online Presentation Session for FEP students on September 19th;
  • Registration until October 20th;
  • On November 8th(Friday), between 9 AM and 6 PM, a Boot Campuswill be held, which is mandatory for competing teams. The Boot Campus will take place in Lisbon, at the premises of the Catholic University;
  • On November 13th(Wednesday) at 3 PM, there will be an institutional presentation of the target company. This event will be in an online format;
  • January 12th(Monday) is the deadline for submitting the written reports.

The top six teams in the written report component will advance to the Research Challenge final.

This year’s edition maintains the rule of no restriction on the number of teams per university.

If a university has more than one registered team, it will have to hold an internal elimination round.

After selecting the winning team from the internal competition, a professional mentor will be appointed to them.

The rules for this year’s edition can be consulted by clicking here.

For any questions and/or comments, please contact Professor Fábio Duarte (fduarte@fep.up.pt).