ORONO – After sitting on a large hoard of cash while the stock market tumbled, students from SPIFFY felt it was time to make their move.

The Student Portfolio Investment Fund of the University of Maine Foundation – SPIFFY for short – placed its biggest bet ever last month, sinking nearly $150,000 into an index fund that mirrors the performance of the Standard & Poor’s 500.

“It was a way to get back in the market all at once and catch the bottom,” said Alfred Doyle, one of the student leaders of the fund, which has achieved results many Wall Street pros might envy.

SPIFFY got its start in 1993 with an initial investment of $200,000 from the foundation that oversees an endowment now totaling about $75 million. Another $150,000 was added two years later.

Students often manage mock portfolios in classroom exercises, but it was rare at that time for universities to give students the practical experience that comes only with running real money.

“It’s becoming more common,” said James Mallett, a professor at Florida’s Stetson University, who has studied student-run funds.

Mallett found that students who manage make-believe portfolios tend to engage in more speculative behavior. Those whose decisions involve real money are encouraged to take a longer-term focus.

There are now more than 100 programs and there’s interest among schools that do not have the program in starting them, he said.

Back in 1993, though, there were only about two-dozen programs when the University of Maine Foundation gave SPIFFY the green light.

“You don’t give college kids $200,000 lightly,” said Amos Orcutt, foundation president and chief executive officer. “It took a lot of soul-searching, and there were several meetings of our board. Finally, we decided to go ahead.”

Neither Orcutt, nor the foundation, has any regrets.

At the beginning of May, SPIFFY’s holdings were worth nearly $910,000, or less than $33,000 shy of its all-time high.

“As of last year, they were our second-best fund manager, out of a total of 10,” Orcutt said.

Beginner’s luck? “We said that for three or four years, but you can’t keep saying it for seven years,” Orcutt said.

Comparisons, however, can be tricky. SPIFFY has a broad range of equity and fixed-income investments and sometimes writes call options against stock the fund owns. Other fund managers must operate within a narrower range of investments, such as bonds or small-cap stocks.

For the past five years, SPIFFY’s funds grew an average of 15.3 percent a year. By contrast, the Lipper Balanced Index, its closest measure, recorded a gain of 10.3 percent per year.

“They’re doing extremely well,” said Michael Boyson of Salomon Smith Barney in Portland, who serves as consultant to the foundation and executes SPIFFY’s trades.

Like many investors, the students were overweighted in technology when that sector was hot. But the students pared down their tech holdings in time to avoid crippling losses, Boyson said.

Over the past month, the fund slashed its cash position from 37 percent to less than 10 percent in order to take advantage of low stock prices to boost its stock holdings from 43 percent to 72 percent. Bonds make up the remainder.

The fund’s success is measured not solely in performance but also in the experience gained by participants, said SPIFFY’s first student leader, Andrew

Vamvakias of Falmouth.

Vamvakias said his work with SPIFFY helped him acquire a Dartmouth MBA and land a job with a Fortune 500 company doing mergers and acquisitions. He knows of five others in the program who landed good jobs in the investment world.

Most of SPIFFY’s 40 members are business students. About half show up for the weekly meetings that begin with an update on news affecting stocks in their portfolio and continue with a look at potential investments.

The two current student leaders, Doyle, of Southwest Harbor, and fellow senior Peter Swanberg, of Lamoine, participated in last month’s University of Dayton National Student Investment Strategy Symposium. SPIFFY finished among the event’s five finalists in its division.

The faculty adviser, Professor Robert Strong, also was at the competition and said the judges were particularly interested in SPIFFY’s use of options as a way to reduce risk and generate additional income.

Strong, who played a key role in winning approval for SPIFFY, said the students find success on their own. He said he occasionally attends meetings but doesn’t try to influence stock selection.

“They don’t run it by me,” he said. “I don’t put my stamp of approval on it. They call Smith Barney and do it.”