EF Academy Oxford make it into the student investor challenge semi-finals
Last week one of our Student Investor Challenge teams: Team Anonymous, received the exciting news that they had made it into the Semi-finals of this nationwide competition, no small feat as they were competing against 10, 000 other teams.
First year student Cassy Le explains how she and the rest of her team were successful in reaching the next stage of this challenge:
Since the challenge started in October 2015, we have struggled to manage time and find a perfect schedule by which we can meet up and plan out our strategies. Nevertheless, with the help of Ms. Helen Story, our economics teacher, we have instead managed to individually do research, so that when we do meet up we can use our time efficiently.
Another difficulty we faced was with the stock market being in crisis since the start, meaning it has been hard to predict the outcomes of our investments and we soon realised that a lot of it was up to luck.
Our portfolio decreased significantly in December, as it was during break and we had very little contact with each other. Having lost a little of the hope and enthusiasm that all teams have at the beginning, we took the challenge half heartedly until our team decided to give it our best shot for the last month of the challenge. And as it turns out, with the stock market stabilizing, our portfolio increased drastically in the last two weeks and we made it through to the semi-finals, thanks to the unbelievable performance of our portfolio in January. Surprised, our initial reactions ranged from disbelief to raging laughter for some time, before it settled in that we had actually made it through the next round as one of 500 teams that stood out from the 10,000 teams that participated.
The second part of the challenge, starting in the middle of February, will consist of making a series of predictions for 4 weeks. The teams will be given points according to the accuracy of their predictions and the teams with the most points by the end of that time will have the opportunity to participate in the live finals which will take place in New York!
The Student Investor Challenge so far has brought us mixed feelings. The Anonymous Team (or the Not So Anonymous Team anymore, as suggested by our Headteacher Dr.Paul Ellis), as ironically as we call ourselves, has made it to the semi-final of the challenge and we are excited to see how it goes!
– The Anonymous Team (Cassy Le, Dzung Do Gia Trung, Zhoshy Sabdalin and Shuo-En Tsai)