What an exciting journey for the students who participated in our 1st stock market Challenge! This was the kind of competition that high school students will remember! It aimed to raise awareness about investment and finance and to promote financial literacy among juniors. It was enjoyable, fun, and educational!
Students worked in teams of 2 to 5 guided by RIT finance students. They learned about teamwork, different types of securities, investment strategies, risk, diversification, company, and industry analysis during the game. Students were given $1,000,000 of virtual money to invest in stocks, bonds, options, futures, and Bitcoin in 10 different markets in the US and around the world. We used the Stocktrak platform, a real-time investment portfolio simulation that allows participants to enter their orders to buy cash or on margin, sell, or short sell stocks.
The trading period was April 21st to May 21st, and the trading rules were set such that students were required to diversify among the different types of securities. In total, 22 teams from different schools in the UAE took on the challenge and traded actively. RIT’s finance students who are familiar with the Stocktrak platform as they use it in the course of their investment held information sessions mentoring the students and introducing them to the world of finance, investment, and risk. students enjoyed the tournament and, most importantly, learned a lot from this unique hands-on experience.
The Finance club, led by second-year finance students, organized the award ceremony on May 22 at the RIT’s new campus in Silicon Oasis. The winning teams and at least one participant from every team were invited to attend the event. All participants were awarded participation certificates. 6 awards were granted as follows:
- The Best Performance award went to a team CSE from Gems Modern Academy
- The Most Diversified Portfolio award went to a team Finessed from Dubai National School,
- The Most Active Investors award went to team Stallions from Gems First Point School
- The Second Best Performance award went to team Thunder Alpha from Gems Modern Academy
- The Third Best Performance award went to a team Jangu from Gems Modern Academy
- The Best Documented Trades award went to team Stonks Corporation from Gems Our Own Indian School
Certificates were also awarded to the most aggressive investment strategy throughout the game.
Overall, this tournament allowed the high school students to learn about investment and the stock market practice. RIT’s Finance club will be holding the 2nd RIT challenge starting from September 2021.
Here are some of the testimonials that participants sent us:
Mohammed Ghaddar, Year 10
Gems First Point School
This experience was new to me, though I was already interested in the concept of investing, I never really knew any strategies. Thanks to this competition, I gained experience and learned lots of trends in the market, and most of all, patience. I hope to come back next year and do better!
Umar Shahzad, Year 10
Gems First Point School
It was an absolute pleasure to take part in the RIT Stock Trading Competition! I and my team experienced our classroom knowledge in the real world, enhancing our pre-existing erudition and enlightened us with new information. Additionally, this competition allowed us to ready ourselves against the future of economic trading, aiding us to immerse ourselves in this rapidly growing vocation. We can’t wait to participate in this unique experience next year too!
Manya Dsouza from team heroes from School
Gems Modern Academy
“I'd like to start by thanking RIT for this amazing opportunity. I absolutely loved the competition!
I loved the experience, waiting every day for the clock to strike 5:30 and hoping it never turned 12! And oh, the weekends were so tense. I’d like to take you all through my journey of this competition, the highs, and the lows. Knowing this competition is only 1 month long, I was focused on short-term gains. The competition started with a blast, My first big discovery was BTX, a biotech company, I earned 45k dollars in just a day with this, then came along NMRD, again a biotech company from which I earned 36 thousand dollars in a day, at this point most of my smaller stocks were also doing well, and I was quickly selling the ones going into loss to minimize losses...so naturally I was wondering how someone could go into the negatives. Then came IHT, a hotel and motel stock, this was the biggest of all, a stock growing like no other, the first time I bought it, I bought the stock I earned 6k dollars in just 3 mins! I got excited and bought more earning 1.5k in 1 minute followed by 13k in 6 mins, each time buying 5k stocks more that is 10k, 15k, 20k, then I bought 30k stocks, it crashed more every day and I sold it on the 5th day losing a whopping 63k, but I had to make up for this, I short 35k of this stock, the next day it skyrocketed from 2.9dollars to 8! A 150% loss! 5 dollars on every stock for 35000 stocks. This is a loss I could not recover from and now I understood how people were in the negative.
So for me, the lesson would be not too short, If I buy a stock! The maximum I could lose is 100% against which is extremely rare, but shorting you can lose an infinite percent, it's also going against the natural trend of the market and there is much more of a risk involved.
To equip me for this competition I watched many informational videos and I now have much more knowledge than I did before starting this competition. I can't wait to participate again and put up a better fight for my contenders, I'm sure they’ll do the same. I would also highly recommend the challenge to the younger ones in school who are yet to choose their careers as I think this could play a role in that crucial decision. Finally, I would like to thank the organizers who were always so very timely in responding to emails and helped solve my every problem. Thank you!”
