Finance students have a place to go to practice their skills and test ideas at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. Study groups huddle in the faculty office of M. Cecilia Bustamante, winner of the 2018 Allen J. Krowe Award for Teaching Excellence. Some students sit on a sofa facing Bustamante’s desk, while others work on a large whiteboard filled with graphs and equations.

By Meredith Cobb Anthony “A.J.” Woodard Jr. ’20 loves music, leadership and math. He combines the first two passions in his side gig as a DJ. “In high school we really didn’t do anything on the weekends,” he says. “So I saw an opportunity to do something for my friends. I picked up DJ-ing, kept it up as a hobby and turned it into a side gig.” His other passion led him to a dual degree program at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, where he is pursuing a full-time MBA and Master of Finance.

Passion for math and science led Russell Wermers to a career in chemical engineering. His transition to finance came later, when he enrolled in an MBA program and discovered the need for quantitative rigor in a frontier industry with high potential for innovation.

A passion for finance started with a 1980s television series for Marwin Glenn ’17, MS ’19. “I used to watch Family Ties with Michael J. Fox,” says Glenn, a Master of Finance candidate with an undergraduate degree in international business. “He was always focused on his end goal, being successful.” Glenn liked the mindset, so he started investing when he joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 2005. “I bought in securities just to get a little experience,” he says.

Pressure to deliver quarterly returns can drive managerial myopia. Recent studies link the short-termism to Wall Street culture and dynamics. But a deeper analysis tells a different story.

Wall Street traders play for higher stakes than Monopoly rivals collecting plastic houses and fake money. But finance professor Albert “Pete” Kyle, author of landmark research on market microstructure, sees both activities as examples of games. As a child growing up in Memphis, Tenn., Kyle enjoyed strategy games like checkers, chess, poker and bridge — especially when winning required a degree of speculation. He also enjoyed market simulations like Monopoly.

Many Bitcoin buyers can't explain their investment because they don't understand how cryptocurrency works. Smith School finance professor Joe Rinaldi and two students provide this primer to help reduce the confusion.