The counties in red is the area the Western New York Index tracks.
Photo: Students in Money Management
BY DAVID SCIBILIA, MANAGING EDITOR
St. Bonaventure University’s Students in Money Management club recently launched the Western New York Index — a collection of publicly traded companies based out of and operating in western New York.
“The index gives people a quick glance at how the economy is doing in Western New York,” said Jim Mahar, Associate Professor of Finance and SIMM’s faculty advisor.
The index is geographically based, meaning every company is owned and headquartered in Western New York.
“We didn’t include McDonald’s or companies where they could be headquartered anywhere,” said Tyler Kelley, a junior finance major heading up the project. “They had to be operated in western New York.”
By giving all stocks in the index equal weight, the index gives a broader picture of the economy.
“There are three big companies in the index,” said Kelley. “If we didn’t use equal weighting, then the index would pretty much just reflect how these three companies are doing. If someone were to purchase into the index, they’d be buying a lot of stock in the three big companies and fractions of stocks of the smaller ones.”
Although the index is not available for people to buy into, Mahar said it serves as an important educational opportunity for students.
“A lot of the future of trading and investing lies in ETFs [collections of stocks people can buy into],” said Mahar. “[SIMM members] get to learn how to build indexes, manage and read them.”
One of the greatest challenges for Kelley was determining which stocks would fit the qualifications of the index.
“It’s tough to find a lot of information on the smaller companies,” said Kelley. “Trying to find out if some of the penny stocks were still publicly traded was the hardest part.”
The index also provides free advertising for the university.
“Every time they announce the index, whether it be through WBFO [a Buffalo, New York NPR news affiliate channel] or the NPR station in Rochester or Syracuse, they will say the St. Bonaventure, Western New York Stock Index,” said Mahar. “You can’t pay for that advertisement.”
The index tracks Constellation Brands, Inc., Paychex Inc, Corning Inc., M&T Bank, Corp., National Fuel Gas Co., Moog Inc. Class A, Gibraltar Industries Inc., Monro Inc., Columbus McKinnon Corp., Transcat Inc., Financial Institutions Inc., Ideanomics Inc, Canandaigua National Corporation, Seneca Foods Corp Class A, Astronics Corporation, 22nd Century Group Inc, Eastman Kodak Co, Evans Bancorp Inc, Chemung Financial Corp., Graham Corp, Lake Shore Bancorp, Inc., Ultralife Corp and Vaccinex, Inc., according to the index website.
scibild22@bonaventure.edu
