Lake Oswego sophomore heads to New York City for Global Youth Investment Summit

For Lake Oswego High School sophomore Arjun Ramakrishnan, a stock pitch isn’t just about research, analytics and numbers – a lot of numbers – it’s also about telling a story.

“I’m very passionate about research and analysis. I really want to do equity research when I get into my career,” said Ramakrishnan. “I think it’s very important to not only provide a bunch of numbers in the pitch and provide a bunch of hard research, but also turn that into a more complete story by giving anecdotal evidence and examples that people can relate to.”

Ramakrishnan is the president and founder of the LOHS chapter of the Young Investor Society, an organization that teaches financial literacy, finance and investing skills to students globally. This year, Ramakrishnan was invited to compete in the Global Youth Investment Summit in New York City. His pitch was recognized as one of the top 100 submissions globally and the first from Oregon to earn a place in the global competition.

For his Global Youth Investment Summit pitch, Ramakrishnan conducted research on the Microsoft Inc. stock, decided to recommend buying the stock and created a presentation on the company’s value in the past, present and future.

“It’s basically a holistic analysis of the company — its owners, its governance and its structure. But it’s also a deep dive into its past performance and its past structures,” said Ramakrishnan. “We looked at each industry that Microsoft is part of, the specific revenue by segment and then on top of that projected it out for ten years.”

The top 100 state and regional pitches moved forward to the competition on May 29-31 in New York City.

By analyzing Microsoft, Ramakrishnan provided context about a company with a longstanding reputation in software and technology — and one that is poised to play a major role within the rise of artificial intelligence.

“What I’ve learned from the OpenAI deal that was made back in 2019, the companies that are providing these AI services are actually reliant on Microsoft Azure servers to host all their operations on. So as AI is scaled larger, Microsoft becomes larger as well,” Ramakrishnan said.

According to Ramakrishnan, this means that Microsoft will continue to grow because it owns a stake in companies like OpenAI and provides cloud computing services to them through their platform Microsoft Azure.

Other than founding the first YIS club chapter in Oregon, Ramakrishnan is also a waterpolo player and participates in Model UN.

“I was actually in the global economics committee. So it was a topic I had a lot of knowledge in and that’s what really allowed me to succeed,” said Ramakrishnan. “The questions I had received were very similar to questions in Young Investor Society meetings, such as ‘How AI impacts the world?’ Model UN experience really comes through when you’re evaluating a stock or evaluating a company because you don’t want to just analyze a company from a one-dimensional perspective; you always want to think from as many perspectives as possible.”

Ramakrishnan credits his father as the “biggest and most influential communicator” in his life and sees learning about investing as a way of shaping your future.

The Global Youth Investment Summit also gives Ramakrishnan a chance to meet like-minded students from around the world and share ideas about finance.

“The perspective that we’re going to bring is our unique and single focus on the future and figuring out the future,” said Ramakrishnan. “I think the quality of our research is what’s going to set me apart and bring Oregon a really big debut on the global stage.”