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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 Portfolio Challenge (but they won't be eligible for the prizes).

What Does Portfolio Challenge Involve?

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 2 November 2009 and 26 February 2010 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 or so teams from each region with the best performing portfolios as of 26 February 2010 will be invited to attend the regional finals**. The dates of the regional finals are:
    • South West England and South Wales Regional Final - Bristol - 17 March 2010
    • South East England Regional Final - London - 18 March 2010
    • Scotland, Northern Ireland and North England Regional Final - Newcastle - 24 March 2010
    • North Wales and the English Midlands Regional Final - Birmingham - 25 March 2010
    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 Portfolio Challenge has started have their starting money index linked to FTSE 100 to ensure every team has an equal chance of winning the competition.

**Only one team from each school/college will be able to attend the regional finals.

How Can I Take Part?

To take part you'll need a team of four students aged 14-19 from your school/college and the support of a teacher. Your teacher can then register your team between 7 September 2009 and 27 November 2009 using their Teacher Reference Number. Teachers and lecturers can also play, to see if they can beat their students. Unlike the students though, they cannot win the trip to New York, but they can play by themselves if they can't put a team together...

What is a Teacher Reference Number?

This is a seven digit number supplied to your teacher by the ifs School of Finance. This will be sent to your school in early September.

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 hers then your team will get a virtual cash bonus! Beware though, Guru's friend Monkey is also playing, buying and selling shares completely at random – doing worse than Monkey would be most embarrassing!

The Rules

  • Registration opens on 7 September 2009 and closes on 27 November 2009.
  • Only teachers can register teams. Registering a team requires that you have a Teacher Reference Number. These will be sent to schools in early September, alternatively if you are a teacher you will be able to request your reference number online once registration is open.
  • Teachers must not disclose their Teacher Reference Number to their students as they will be able to make changes to other teams from your school. Doing so may result in disqualification.
  • Student teams must consist of four members aged between 14 and 19 on the closing date of the competition (26 February 2010).
  • UPDATED RULE: Each school or college can enter as many teams as they wish, but only the top team from any establishment will be allowed through to the regional finals of the Portfolio Challenge.
  • 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.
  • Should a disqualification occur, the ifs School of Finance's decision on disqualification is final and can only be negotiated through the formal appeals 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.

Portfolio Challenge Trading Rules

  • Trading for the Portfolio Challenge opens on 2 November 2009 and closes when the markets close on 26 February 2010.
  • Each team registered will have a notional £100,000 to invest. This is index-linked to the FTSE-100 until you start trading, so if you cannot start trading when the market opens on 2 November 2009 you will not be at a disadvantage.
  • Your portfolio must consist of ten stocks chosen from the FTSE100 companies, plus 50 selected smaller companies that we have called the ifs SmallCap 50.
  • Of your stocks, at least six must be from the FTSE100.
  • When you buy a stock, you'll be charged stamp duty and commission, just like you would be in the real world.
  • When you sell a stock, you'll be charged commission, just like you would be in the real world.
  • You 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. Each individual trust page outlines the costs for that trust.
  • Holding more than £15,000 in hard (virtual) cash is not very helpful and against the rules (the competition is all about investing, after all)!
  • The minimum investment in any one stock or investment trust is £1000.
  • There is a 20% maximum spend in any one company.
  • All stock market data is genuine live data, provided courtesy of Bloomberg, but may be delayed by up to 15 minutes so should not be used for trading decisions outside of the competition!
  • Should the data shown on the Student Investor site differ from data shown elsewhere on the internet the data shown on the Student Investor site will be considered to be correct for the purposes of the competition. This means you should always base your final trading decisions on the information provided by the Student Investor website, not on information found elsewhere.
  • There is a limit of 1 transaction per team per company per day.
  • Each team can own a maximum of 0.25% of the available shares in any one company.
  • To be eligible to receive dividend payments, teams must hold a share in the company on its ex dividend date.