School students outperform stock market

The “FTSE 5 Returns”, a team of 4 school students from Ralph Thoresby High School in Leeds, outperformed over 7,600 other teams from across the UK to win the first ifs Student Investor monthly prize.

The ifsStudent Investor Challenge, sponsored by Deutsche Bank, Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust and Bloomberg is a free to enter competition open to teams of 4 students aged between 14 and 19.

The challenge, being undertaken by over 30,000 school and college students, involves investing a fantasy £100,000 in the stock market over a three month period.

The overall winning team will receive an all expenses paid trip to New York and £2,000 for their school. There is also a monthly prize for the best performing team in each of the 3 months that the challenge takes place – the “FTSE 5 Returns” team are the first monthly prize winners.

One of the first investments “FTSE 5 Returns” made was in CMR (Chemical Mineral Resources), which produced a profit of over £3,000 in their first day of trading!

The “FTSE 5 Returns” then followed a strategy of buying into utility markets such as Scottish Power & Scottish Southern Energy. All of which performed well over the 4 week period.

Speculation surrounding the possible takeovers of ITV and Wilson Bowden led the team to invest in these companies too.

The team were said to be delighted to have beaten so many other teams to win the first monthly prize.

One of the winning students said, “…bad days for the FTSE have not always been bad days for us…' Another team member added, “A lot of our success can be put down to careful analysis of the FT and the financial section of teletext.'

Paul Jones, the teacher responsible for registering the “FTSE 5 Returns” team said,

The team have been autonomous since the initial stages and deserve all of the credit for their success. They are enthusiastic and have developed a very good understanding of the workings of the stock market.'

Anne Kiem, Head of External Affairs at the ifsSchool of Finance said, “The “FTSE 5 Returns” team have done incredibly well to outperform thousands of other teams.

They have clearly gained a good insight into stock markets and investments in a very short period of time.

I wish them, and all the other teams involved, the very best of luck over the remaining two months of the competition.”

Further prizes of £100 per team will be awarded in January and February 2007 before the overall winner is announced.