Texas McCombs Investment Advisors
Welcome to Our $20M Sandbox
McCombs led the academic world in establishing an investment fund as a real-world experiential learning opportunity for elite MBA students in finance. Look at what we have built.
Apply today
Statue of a bull among buildings in a city
Investing for Real
The Texas McCombs Investment Advisers allows a select group of McCombs MBA students to make investments using investor money with real return expectations. Student fund managers get a firsthand lesson in how wealth is created through investing – working under the guidance of McCombs faculty.
Contact us
Fund Groups
  1. Information Technology and Telecommunications
  2. Industrials, Energy, Materials, and Utilities
  3. Consumer Discretionary and Consumer Staples
  4. Healthcare and Finance

Selected students manage $20 million for the University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) and the McCombs Business School Foundation. They work closely with the leadership team at UTIMCO to review portfolios, discuss performance, and analyze market conditions. Managers are divided between these four groups, each responsible for researching and evaluating acquisition and sell decisions within their assigned segments.

Investment Portfolios

The Longhorn Portfolio invests in domestic equity securities and is separately managed for UTIMCO. The Portfolio is benchmarked to the S&P 500 index.

The Endowment Portfolio is a well-diversified asset allocation portfolio, including domestic and international equities and domestic fixed-income securities. The Endowment Portfolio team manages endowments for the AIM Investment Center, the Business School Foundation (BSF), and various scholarships and donations for the McCombs School of Business. This group has the objective of long-term growth and preserving the long-term real purchasing power of assets while providing a relatively predictable and growing stream of annual distributions supporting the McCombs School of Business.

A Legacy of Strong Oversight

The MBA Investment Fund LLC was founded in 1994 by Keith Brown and George Gau with the support of leaders in the asset management industry. It was the first legally constituted private investment company created to enable MBA students to obtain real-world experience managing investment portfolios and developing client relationships.

Initially, 37 investors committed $1.6 million to the Fund. The Growth Fund was founded in December 1994 and the Value Fund in December 1999, with additional offerings in the 1990s and early 2000s. The Endowment Fund was created in May 2001 to manage the assets of the AIM Investment Center and other funds donated to Texas McCombs.

In 2020, the Fund moved to an in-house model in which students no longer manage money from investors outside the university. UTIMCO agreed to invest $7.5 million in the Texas McCombs Longhorn Portfolio and strengthened its involvement with student managers. A new legal entity was created: “Texas McCombs Investment Advisers, LLC.”

Our Students and Advisors
Meet the Team