Pupils outperform market and over 5,000 opponents in investment challenge

Two share-savvy squads from the School have made it through to the semi-final of the London Institute of Banking & Finance, Student Investor Challenge, an annual competition which this year attracted more than 5,600 teams.

Given a virtual £100,000 to invest in an Active Investor Portfolio and in a Strategic Investor Portfolio, and with a requirement to continually trade in order to avoid taxes, the participating teams of 14-19-year-olds had to buy low and sell high in order to make as much profit as possible. 

Proving they know their bulls from their bears, the School’s ‘Dundee Wolves’ team of Lewis McLennan, Steven Chen, Ethan McColgan and Ikechukwu Charles-Ibe (all F4), managed to seal a hugely impressive 2nd place in the overall league table for the qualifying stage, courtesy of a whopping return of £125,776.09 on their combined original investment.   

Fellow HSD team ‘Minor Investments’, (Ross Clark, Jonathan Lang, Craig Gunn and Fraser Coupar (all F5)) also demonstrated sound stock market strategy to qualify for the next stage courtesy of the performance of their Active Investor Portfolio.   

The semi-final, which got underway this week, will see a total of 500 teams from UK schools compete online for the next 4 weeks for a place in the final and the chance to win an educational trip to New York.

 Neil Higgins, Teacher of Business Education, said, “The teams have been brilliant.  

“Their enthusiasm is clear to see and they have had to work closely as a team to monitor different sectors of the stock market. Additionally, they have had to listen respectfully to each other’s opinions and be resilient when they have made losses because it is very easy to take greater and greater risks to recoup a loss.  

“Finally, for the F4 team to come second in the league table out of over 5,000 teams is a phenomenal achievement. What is more, the skills and knowledge they have gained will stand them in good stead during their study of Economics.”