For investment info, Wall Street does well to look to North Dakota

Nancy Beneda credits her work as an accountant with giving her insights into how to use her research and writing to make her classroom teaching more effective.

Where does a Wall Street stock analyst turn for more information?  Some might visit Fortune 500 CEOs at their corporate headquarters.  Others might make a plant visit.  Others might read the specialty business publications and run across the findings of University of North Dakota researcher Nancy Beneda.

Beneda has published or co-authored no fewer than 20 articles or papers since September 2002 about investing in the market or corporate finance.  Her research has appeared in a variety of respected journals, including The CPA Journal, Corporate Finance Review, Journal of Asset Management, and Management Research News.

“My special research areas are IPOs (initial preferred offerings) and corporate finance,” said Beneda, an associate professor of finance and the Vaaler Insurance Fellow at UND.  “I am able to take most of my research and writings and relate it to what I am able to teach in the classroom.  I feel that makes me a more effective teacher with my students.

“My practical experience of working as a CPA helps me relate to my students,” she continued.  “I have been where they want to go.  I have seen where individuals start out as a bank teller and 10 years later they are managing a mutual fund.”

In the February 2004 issue of The CPA Journal, Beneda co-authored an article (with Jack Hammen and Harold Wilde of UND) comparing rates of return on equity (ROE) for investment purposes.  The article focused on how four different on-line financial Web sites (Yahoo, SmartMoney, Morningstar, and Bloomberg) provided information about ROE for the 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average Companies and how each Web site calculated ROE in a different manner.  The article shows how investors should look at current versus forecasted ROE to determine whether a company should be part of their portfolios.

Beneda came to UND in 2000 after earning her Ph.D. in finance from Saint Louis University.  She had spent 12 years in public accounting and auditing in the private sector before embarking on a career in academe.  Beneda’s vita also includes an M.B.A. from Syracuse University and a B.S. in business and economics from Bloomsburg University (Pennsylvania).

In a recent edition of Corporate Finance Review (September/October 2005), Beneda published an article on the “systematic risk of investing in technology companies” from 1986 to 2001.  Beneda’s research centered on whether “small tech stocks outperformed the NASDAQ over time and how the large tech stocks outperformed the S&P 500 over time.”  Beneda’s research looked at the 34 largest technology companies (1986-2001), including eBay, Microsoft, Dell Computer, and Yahoo.

“I was able to show that over time if you have a well-diversified portfolio, then the return on your investments will be comparable to the risk you have taken,” Beneda added.  “On average, investors of technology stocks will have a higher rate of return when you look at the average rate of return of all companies.”