i f s School of Finance: Incorporated by Royal Charter

Student Investor 2008
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Portfolio Challenge

Portfolio Challenge is a UK wide investment game for students with a top prize of a trip to New York. On top of that, both you and your school/college get prize money to spend as well – bonus! There are also other prizes on offer throughout the challenge – check out all the prizes here. Teachers can also try and beat their students in phase one of the Challenge (but they won't be eligible for the prizes).

Portfolio Challenge 2008 is now finished. Congratulations to our winners Teamexcel from Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School who won a hard fought National Final to land the top prize of an expenses paid educational trip to New York for themselves and their teacher. They also win £2000 prize money for their school. Qui Audet Vincit from The College of Richard Collyer came in a close second, with Dividend Dudes from Plymouth College hot on their heels in third place.

What does the Challenge involve?

The Portfolio Challenge is designed for teams of four students and has two distinct phases:

  • Phase One: Using this website, invest a virtual £100,000* in a set of stocks between 5 November 2007 and 29 February 2008 and watch your wealth grow.
    Each month, the most improved team will be rewarded with a prize (only one prize per team).
  • Phase Two: The top 20 teams from each region with the best performing portfolios as of 29 February 2008 will be invited to attend the regional finals in mid-March 2008. Teams will be given a series of questions and the top two teams from each region will be invited to the National Final in late April. You can find more information on the regional finals on the download page.

*Teams registering after the Challenge has started have their starting money index linked to FTSE 100 to ensure every team has an equal chance of winning the Challenge.

How can I take part?

Unfortunately registration for the Portfolio Challenge is now closed for this year.

How do I know which shares to trade?

There is a whole host of extra information on the website on each company to help you make a good investment decision. Throughout the game, you'll be able to refer to advice from our mysterious share Guru on how to pick your shares, and if your portfolio performs better than his then your team will get a virtual cash bonus! Beware though, Guru's friend Monkey is also playing this year, buying and selling shares completely at random – doing worse than the Monkey would be most embarrassing!

The Rules

  • General Rules
    • Only teachers can register teams. Registering a team requires that you have the school's unique login number. If you do not have one, teachers can request a unique login number here.
    • Teachers must not disclose their school's unique login number to their students. Doing so may result in disqualification.
    • Student teams must consist of four members aged between 14 and 19.
    • Each school or college can enter as many teams as they wish, but only the top two teams from any establishment will be allowed through to the regional finals.
    • A student may only be a member of one participating team and team membership cannot change during the competition.
    • Using a vulgar, insulting or otherwise inappropriate team name will result in your team being disqualified.
    • Any attempts to hack into the site (e.g. by a student using a teacher's unique login number or by more dubious methods) will be grounds for instant disqualification. You will be caught!.
    • Should a disqualification occur, the ifs School of Finance's decision on disqualification is final and can only be negotiated through the formal appeal procedure. Appeals go through an independent committee. Once a team has been disqualified from the competition the details of the appeals committee will be forwarded to them if they wish to contest the decision.
  • Trading rules
    • Your portfolio will consist of ten stocks chosen from a list of FTSE100 companies, plus 50 selected smaller companies which make up the ifs SmallCap 50.
    • Of your stocks, at least six must be from the FTSE100.
    • Those companies that make the FTSE's FTSE4Good UK 50 ethical index will be clearly marked.
    • When you buy a stock, you'll be charged stamp duty and commission, just like you would be in the real world. You will also be charged commission when you sell stock.
    • You'll also have the option to invest up to £20,000 of your virtual cash into an investment trust.
    • The charges for investing in a trust vary, just like the real world.
    • Holding more than £15,000 in hard (virtual) cash is not very helpful and against the rules (the challenges are all about investing, after all!).
    • The minimum investment in any one stock or investment trust is £1,000.
    • There is a 20% maximum spend in any one company.
    • All stock market data will be the genuine live data, provided courtesy of Bloomberg.