Unfortunately, the Student Investor Challenge will not be running this academic year (2022/23). We are working with a number of partners to run a competition in the future and will update this page accordingly.

If you’d like to be emailed when we have an update please contact fccrm@libf.ac.uk and we’ll add you to our mailing list.

About the Student Investor Challenge

The Student Investor Challenge is the UK's premier investment competition for students. In previous years the top prize was a trip New York – including a visit to the financial centre - with spending money!

What does the challenge involve?

The Student Investor Challenge is designed for teams of four students to compete against each other and has three rounds. The competition is open to teams from schools anywhere in the world, however teams from schools based outside the UK are only able to take part in round one of the challenge. However, they are eligible for the International Online Trader of the Year prize, which is not open to UK teams.

Round One

Teams invest their virtual money in a set of stocks and other investment instruments and they must create two portfolios:

• The Active Investor portfolio allows teams to trade every day.
• The Strategic Investor portfolio only allows a limited number of trades per month, encouraging long term thinking.

Teams have a virtual £100,000 to invest in each portfolio.

Semi-finals

A total of 500 teams from UK schools compete against each other in a four-week online semi-final.

The semi-finalists will be selected from the competing UK student teams as follows:

• First, we take the top 250 teams based on combined performance of their Active Investor and Strategic Investor portfolios.
• Next, with these teams discounted, the top 100 teams based solely on their Active Investor performance.
• Then, the top 100 teams based solely on their Strategic Investor performance.
• Finally, we take the 50 best performing teams based on percentage portfolio gain of their Active Investor portfolio in January 2020. This is a great chance for 'late-chargers' to gain a place in the semi-finals.

For each week of the semi-finals, teams will need to correctly predict the closing price of certain assets by the end of trading on that Friday. Points will be awarded each week according to how accurately the closing price has been predicted and how long the prediction has been held. A team's overall score at the end of the semi-finals is the sum of their best three week's performance out of four (i.e. their worst performing week is discounted).

Finals

The eight best performing teams from the semi-finals qualify for the national final, which is usually held in London.

 

What makes a team?

Each team must consist of four students who aged 14-19. Each school/college can register as many teams as they like, but each student can only belong to one team. All members of a team must be from the same school/college and each team must have the support of a teacher.

Teachers and lecturers can also play, to see if they can beat their students. Teacher teams can have as many members as they like but are not eligible for any of the prizes on offer.

Practice game

To help teams get into the swing of things, we also have a practice game which is normally available for a few weeks before the formal competition opens. Participation in the practice game is not mandatory and teams may join the practice game at any time. No prizes, no pressure, it's the perfect way to prepare for the live challenge.

How do teams know which shares to trade?

Once registered, teams will be able to access a whole host of extra information on this website to help them make good investment decisions.

Free subscription to the Financial Times

The Financial Times is offering free subscriptions to schools teaching 16 to 19-year-old students. To gain free access to FT.com for students and teachers at your school, simply follow the link below.

Financial Times Free Subscription