QE student investors narrowly missed out on a place in the national final of a hugely popular competition after coming fifth among the top 80 teams across the country.
Team Batrachomyomachy (the word comes from Ancient Greek and means a petty quarrel) first shone in the initial round of the ifs Student Investor Challenge. This involved investment of a fictional £100,000 over a three-and-a-half month period up to the end of January. The team increased the value of their portfolio to £178,236; they ranked eighth nationally at this point out of 8,720 teams, and fifth out of 3,225 teams in the South East, the most competitive region.
Even within QE, there was significant competition, with some 56 teams, involving 224 boys from Years 10-13, registering to take part. The top 20 teams in each region progress to the semi-finals stage, but there is a maximum of one team per school.
Team Batrachomyomachy therefore duly took their place at the semi-finals. There the contest involved teams predicting the closing value of four different stocks per week for four weeks. The earlier in the week the prediction was made and the closer to the closing price, the higher the points gained.
A strong performance saw the QE boys gain fifth place out of all 80 teams in this stage of the competition, but they were third in the South East region. Since only the top two teams in each region were eligible to progress, the QE team failed to reach the national finals by the narrowest of margins, with its score of 2331.91 being fewer than three points behind the South East’s Glenthorne High School, which was immediately above it in the league tables.
“The team performed extremely well in what was a very closely fought contest,” said QE’s Head of Economics, Liane Ryan.
Team Batrachomyomachy comprised four Year 12 students: Yash Patel, Kamil Zajac, David Hao and Charran Santhalingam.