Faculty and Research

College of Business

Biography

Vijay Kumar Chopra joined the University of Central Florida as a Lecturer of finance in 2024 after a 25-plus year successful career on Wall Street. He was an equity portfolio manager and quantitative researcher at Deutsche Asset Management, Jacobs Levy, Bear Stearns Asset Management, Mesirow Financial and most recently at DCM Advisors. He received his MBA and Ph.D. degrees in finance from the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University.

His research focuses on portfolio construction, factor models, earnings revisions and financial forecasting. He has published in the Financial Analysts Journal, he Journal of Portfolio Management, Journal of Investing and Management Science.

Areas of Interests

  • Research: Factor models, portfolio construction, financial forecasting
  • Teaching: Investments, Applied Portfolio Management, Corporate Finance

 Education

  • CFA, 1996
  • Ph.D., Finance, Vanderbilt University, 1990
  • M.B.A., Finance, Vanderbilt University, 1988
  • B.Tech., Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, India, 1985

Professional Experience

Portfolio Manager and Quantitative Researcher:

  • Heckman Global Advisors, New York, NY, 2009-2023
  • Bear Stearns Asset Management, New York, NY, 2007-2009
  • Heckman Global Advisors, New York, NY, 2009-2023
  • Bear Stearns Asset Management, New York, NY, 2007-2009
  • VKC Investments, Short Hills, NJ, 2004-2007
  • Jacobs Levy Equity Management, Florham Park, NJ, 2002-2004
  • Deutsche Asset Management, New York, NY, 1997-2002

Selected Publications

  • “Why So Much Error in Analysts’ Earnings Forecasts?” in Financial Analysts Journal, November/December 1998
  • “Quant Quandaries,” in Global Investor, May 1996
  • “Improving Financial Forecasting: Combining Data with Intuition,” co-authored with Patricia Lin in Journal of Portfolio Management, Spring 1996
  • “Modelling Structural Change,” in Global Investor, March 1996
  • “The Effect of Errors in Means, Variances and Covariances on Optimal Portfolio Choice,” co- authored with Dr. William T. Ziemba in Journal of Portfolio Management, Winter 1993
  • “Improving Optimization,” in Journal of Investing, Fall 1993
  • “Massaging Mean-Variance Inputs: Returns from Alternative Global Investment Strategies in the 1980s” co-authored with Chris Hensel, and Dr. Andrew L Turner in Management Science, July 1993