Marco Student ’ s Persistence Pays Dividends for Investment Club at FGCU

Marco Islander Paul Reisinger has created a legacy at Florida Gulf Coast University, and his faculty advisor couldn’t be prouder. Reisinger, a Marco Island Academy alum, started an investment club at the university that has flourished. His advisor, Professor Thomas Mathews, credits Reisinger for his persistence. "He's been the one who's been driving that all the way through, Thomas Mathews said. "with a lot of challenges and stumbling blocks along the way. His persistence is what brought that club together.”

Thomas said Reisinger founded the STOC club at FGCU with the humblest of beginnings. “He had come to me with the idea of starting this club, ”Mathews said of Reisinger. “With universities, you know, you'll get a couple of students who are really excited about an initiative, and then they will drive it. But as soon as they leave, then the initiative falls apart. So Paul was starting from ground zero. And he had some challenges along the way. He couldn't get enough support from the school itself. The school, the way in which these registered student organizations get funding involves massive amounts of bureaucracy that you have to go through. So there was a point when he was just beginning to say, 'I'm just going to throw in the towel and just forget about this.' But then, thankfully, he remained persistent. I continued to encourage him and you know, he brought it to fruition. If it wasn't for his persistence, the club wouldn't be where it is and we wouldn't have been able to pull off the panel event or the discussion that we had yesterday.”

The STOC club hosted a well-attended panel discussion on Thursday, November 2, at the university. It appears Reisinger has built an organization that will continue to thrive even after he graduates.

"When I first came to FGCU, ”Paul Reisinger said, "I was a commuting student and I didn't want to just come to campus and not be involved. I wanted to join an investment club because I had been getting interested in investing at the time. When I went to look for an investment club, there wasn't one. So I saw a great opportunity to start one so I could surround myself with like-minded students that are interested in learning more about investing. And so at the time, I didn't know very many students or professors, so I got in touch with the finance department and spoke to some professors and made announcements in all of my classes to spread the word that I was starting this club. And then I interviewed for officers, and we had a team of officers, and then they helped me build the club up. And so since October of 2021, we've continued to grow and we now have around 70 members. 've done my best to learn how to delegate responsibilities between the other officers, and then working as a team helps make it so the entire club isn't dependent on me. I've just been very lucky to surround myself with the right people and excellent officers and members who are super excited about the club and have put in tremendous effort to help me out. Now it's not even really about helping me out, but it's more of a US thing and we've gotten connected.”

The STOC club has seen tangible results.

“Our Eagle Fund, our University’s student-managed investment fund, has roughly $800,000 in assets under management as a small part of our university endowment fund.”

The FGCU investment team recently finished first in the national student-managed investment fund competition.

“They’ve been very successful,” Mathews said proudly. "They only had five members when they first started, so they went from five to 70 within the span of about a year and a half. I would say that that’s a pretty amazing success rate. For the vast majority of their meetings, they get somewhere between 30 to 35 attendees.”

Mathews said the success of the club has been thanks to Reisinger.

“Paul was very persistent, very determined, and not afraid to go and ask people. He was not afraid of failure. He learns from his failures. And those are really good qualities for success, in my view. You know, it's as they say, the successful boxer is not the one who gets knocked out and lays on the floor. It's the one who gets up over and over again and is willing to take the next punch. So from my perspective, he definitely embodied that.”