A QE Sixth Form team finished third in a national investment competition, only narrowly missing out on the top two spots.
According to the organisers, ifs University College, the four Year 12 boys “performed exceptionally well” in the tense final of the 2016 UK Student Investor Challenge, where they were competing against seven other teams. They won £1,000 for the School.
Arnav Jhanji, Hayato Murata, Ashwin Ravichandran and Jas Shah, who named their team Doughnuts are Back, impressed the judges with their knowledge and understanding of financial investing, overcoming a tough live-trading challenge in which they responded to market events, before delivering an outstanding presentation on the household goods and home construction industry.
The team performed strongly in all three rounds of the competition: having successfully increased two virtual portfolios on the stock market over a three-month period, they accurately predicted the rise and fall of stocks, shares and assets at the semi-final stage. To reach the final, they outperformed nearly 40,000 other students from across the UK.
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BBC business journalist and presenter Steph McGovern (pictured with the boys, above and below), who was one of the competition’s four judges, said: “It is an incredibly difficult skill to be able to decipher complex information and present it in an informative and accessible way, and Doughnuts are Back did exceptionally well in doing this. The level of research and analysis they demonstrated was superb.
“I know from my own experience the importance of taking part in competitions like the Student Investor and I hope they use the skills and experience they have gained throughout their careers.”
Alison Pask, Vice Principal Financial Capability & Community Outreach at ifs University College, said:
“Each year the level of competition in the Student Investor Challenge gets higher and higher, and my congratulations go to Arnav, Jas, Hayato and Ashwin. Not only did they have to win over a panel of financial experts with their presentations, they had to trade in a number of virtual assets and markets to finish as well as they did.”
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The ifs Student Investor Challenge is the largest competition of its kind for schools in the UK and is run by financial education charity ifs University College. The competition is designed not only to improve students’ understanding of investing and finance, but also to improve key employability skills such as researching, teamwork and confidence.
QE’s Head of Economics, Liane Ryan, who organised the School’s entry, said: “I am very proud of our team’s achievement. The Student Investor Challenge final gave the boys an invaluable opportunity to present in front of a panel of industry experts and they, along with many of our students, have enjoyed participating in the competition and learning about trading and the financial services industry.”