Our sixth form teams of would-be equity traders have been competing in the annual Student Investor competition, organised by IFS University College.  They had to invest a virtual £100,000 into two stock portfolios (active and strategic), buying and selling shares in reaction to company news, takeover rumours, economic statistics and world events.  The markets were particularly challenging over the period of the game, with the FTSE 100 index standing at 6416 at the start of trading on 12th October and falling to 6083  when the first round of the game ended on the 29th January.

With the market falling by more than 5% over the period, teams were struggling to maintain the value of their investments.  The ‘Wolf Pack of Wall Street’ (Sharon Stephen, Bernard Kobersy, Faizan Qureshi and Taha Hussain) did exceptionally well under the circumstances, finishing with an average over their strategic and active portfolios of £99,537 – a loss of only 0.46% and a significant outperformance relative to the market.  They came 301st overall out of more than 7300 school teams, a result that would have qualified them for the semi-finals (unfortunately, only UK-based schools are eligible for the main prizes).

Our other teams also performed creditably.  ‘ShowMeTheMoney’ (Lucy Choi, Mareya Khouri, Ryhana Rasidi and Noor Al Saadi) came 1887th, while ‘BRICS Bank’ (Agnay Mohindra, Muhammad Khalid, Rahim Khan and Yash Bhatia) finished in 2843rd place – both teams beating ‘The Guru’ from the organisers themselves!

I am sure that many of our students will find the experience useful, either for their university courses or for their potential future careers in the financial sector.

Martin Johnson