Where it Started

Ryan Davidoff is a senior leader of the Economics Club and co-editor-in-chief of the Harvard-Westlake Economic Review. We sat down with him to talk about where his interest in markets came from, how it has changed, and what he hopes the Review becomes.

Asked what first drew him to economics, Davidoff said there were two answers. The first was his older brother.

"My brother went to business school, and he was always really interested in economics. I really look up to him, and he started imparting lessons he learned onto me. It was a great way to bond with my brother, but the material I also found to be very interesting."

The second was a competition. During his sophomore year, the Economics Club hosted a stock market competition, and Davidoff joined promptly.

"That really piqued my interest: investing in companies, and trying to get ahead in that," he said. "And then from there, I started actually doing deep dives of companies, and learning company financials and macroeconomic factors that affect the stock market and that affect the country. And it really just became a topic I loved."

$100,000 to $26 million

Davidoff won the stock market competition that year in a landslide victory. He turned the initial $100,000 into over $26 million when the competition closed.

"My investing strategy during that competition was fairly degenerate, or would be considered degenerate to investors," he said. "I basically filtered for the most volatile stocks with high volume on any given day, and would kind of ride the wave of those stocks."

That approach produced what he described as swings in both directions. While all swings come with their ups and downs, in early January Davidoff hit it big.

"I invested in this biotech company that had a massively successful trial for treating cancer symptoms, and I went from around $200,000 to $1.8 million."

From there, the strategy shifted from chasing daily volatility to using leverage on high-beta names- a high-beta stock is a company whose price swings more than the overall stock market.

"Not necessarily needing a large amount of volatility or volume, but over the course of a week or two weeks there would be enough volatility to capture a significant gain. So I would buy a two-times leverage ETF, for example."

The competition closed out before the school year did, and by the time it did, Ryan had made a return of 260 times his principal.

"By the time the school year ended in June, [the portfolio was] around $26 million -  from $100K."

How He Invests Now: Moat & Growth

Davidoff invests his own money, and he is quick to say that real capital has produced a very different philosophy from the one that won him a competition.

"Now, I basically follow two main principles, which are investing in companies with a strong moat, a durable competitive advantage, and that are growing. And that can be simplified down to moat and growth."

He pointed to Google, ASML, and Amazon as examples of businesses with what he called basically impenetrable moats, some of which are accelerating their growth. But owning good companies is only half of it; the other half is price.

"Determining when to buy is based off of whether you can calculate a margin of safety. Is this company priced attractively relative to their earnings and earnings growth potential?"

That distinction, he said, is where a lot of investors get tripped up by a good story.

"Google right now is a great company, a phenomenal company, but may be overvalued. A company like Nvidia, [a] phenomenal company, but they're being priced like they're a phenomenal company."

Timing has helped. Davidoff and his brother invest together, and he credits a window in spring 2025 for much of their positioning.

"The S&P experienced around an 18% crash. And we were lucky. We were able to get in around that time, from April to May."

Rather than one concentrated bet, Davidoff described a portfolio deliberately split into buckets by risk: a portion in stocks, a portion in LEAPS, a portion in sold puts, a portion in fixed income, and a portion held in cash.

"The 30-year Treasury is slowly becoming more and more attractive as the yields rise," he said. The cash, meanwhile, is "ready to employ at any moment, if an opportunity arises."

A small slice goes to riskier, smaller names, the bucket that has, so far, produced his highest percentage returns. He cited Unusual Machines (UMAC), a drone components manufacturer, as an example of a position that has multiplied several times over since he bought it.

He also spends a lot of time on cash flow, and on the question of which valuation metric actually tells the truth.

"We're big into valuing companies based off of their enterprise value to free cash flow, and enterprise value to owner's earnings, especially with the capex boom right now. A company like Meta is hard to value on their free cash flow. It's more accurate to value them on enterprise value to owner's earnings, which is basically normalizing for actual maintenance capex: what they actually need to run the business, and what they're investing for the future."

Building the Review

Davidoff helped launch the Harvard-Westlake Economic Review this year. His reasoning was partly personal and partly civic.

"I decided to start the Review because, one, I'm just very passionate about the topics. So getting my opinions and views out there, but also educating people on the actual facts of a topic, bringing light to, for example, why inflation is rampant and why things are getting more expensive. That's a big passion of mine."

The larger goal, he said, is to build something students can write into rather than just read.

"[It gives] students at Harvard-Westlake an ability to write about economic topics and display certain unheard-of facets of economics to other students, and gives a place where students can explore economics beyond what they're learning in Econ or Honors Econ, whether that be about markets, policy, current events, or business."

Looking ahead, he wants scale in both directions.

"I'd hope that the club will grow into a larger student-run platform, where we can get more contributors and more coverage, and a really strong community of students where we have a plethora of student writers, and then an even larger base of readers who are becoming more educated on economic topics and current events."

On Pressure, and Following What You Actually Care About

We closed by asking what he'd say to students trying to balance their own interests against pressure from parents, deans, and classmates.

"I know it can be hard, but you have to put your own interests at the top. You have to prioritize your own interests and take them seriously," he said. "There's always going to be people on the outside telling you what you should study, what career you should pursue, what major you should try to take, what's realistic for you, what's practical for you."

Aside from economics, Davidoff is the Offensive Coordinator for the Harvard-Westlake Junior Varsity Football Team, an Assistant Coach to its Varsity team, and runs his own sports podcast, among other ventures. Davidoff’s advice was not to completely drown out the noise, but to prioritize what is important to you.

"You don't have to completely ignore everything everyone's saying. But the things you care about cannot be drowned out by the external pressures."

His case rests on a simple claim about where good work comes from.

"I've always found that my best work comes from genuine curiosity. And you can't force genuine curiosity," he said. "If you truly care about something, you have to go for it. You just have to."

Interview condensed and edited for length and clarity.