Fantasy share trading competition sees student beat stock market by 27%

EFinancialCareers.com recently ran a Fantasy Share Trading competition with the Bank of America, and the winner a 20-year-old student might be getting a few calls for advice from those well-paid City fund managers who claim that itís a difficult time to be a stock picker.

For Johan Ekblom, a first year management student at the London School of Economics, managed to increase a notional 50,000 portfolio of UK stocks by 25 per cent in just two months during which time the FTSE 100 fell by 2 per cent.

As the winner of the first ever eFinancialCareers.com / Bank of America Fantasy Share Trading Game, Johan invested the imaginary sum in UK stocks over a two month period to 10 January 2003, and saw his portfolio grow to 62,500 ñ an increase of 25 per cent. During the same period the FTSE100 and FTSE All-Shares indices both fell, down 2.2 per cent and 1.6 per cent respectively.

Eight hundred undergraduate and MBA students from 70 universities and business schools took up the challenge to try and beat the market. In all, nearly 200 managed to beat the FTSE100 index.


John Benson, Chief Executive of eFinancialCareers said: ìOur winners did extraordinarily well to beat the market by such an extent and we have enjoyed being able to give students a real insight into how the stock market works.íí

The top five performers in the competition have boosted their career prospects by being fast-tracked for interviews for Bank of Americaís Graduate Analyst and MBA Associate programmes. Other prizes include a laptop computer, DVD and MP3 machines and Palm Digital Assistants.