The Wharton Global High School Investment Competition – organized by Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania – is a free, online simulation for high school students, in which students work in teams of 4-7 with an adult advisor to collaborate to invest in the market and create an investment portfolio that will suit for a client’s short and long-term investment goals. The competition took place in Wharton’s investment simulator website and it is expected for teams to build an investment strategy and portfolio with $100,000 in virtual cash, over the course of 10 weeks from September 27, 2021 until December 3, 2021. Throughout the competition, each team will have to submit two deliverables, the mid-term and final report as the regulation to be able to enter the semifinal round if chosen. This year, Sekolah Ciputra sent 6 teams to enter the competition, which is a huge increase from last year’s, and all teams have worked hard to fine-tune their investment strategy and portfolio in order to suit the client’s investment goals.

I was in a team of 5, consisting of 4 Grade11 students and myself in Grade 12. We did not have any prior experience in investing before joining the competition, but we were all determined to learn how to invest in the competition as our main goal. Therefore, we learnt investment in general through watching several videos and studying several web pages before the competition started. Once the competition started, we didn’t put our first stock on that day as we were still discussing which stock should we buy as our first, but we finally put it in a few days before the maximum due date. We bought more stocks and sold some of them as time passed, whilst understanding the factors that affects investors when buying stocks (e.g., looking at ratios, company status, financial reports), making the mid-term report, and trying to fine-tune our investment strategy. As the trading period came near to the end, my team still had a lot of cash and we decided to do a buying spree (it is not advised, but we did it) as we wanted to use it to buy stocks, although we still had some even after the trading period ended. The competition officially ends with final reports being submitted to Wharton for all teams, including ours.

We did face numerous obstacles throughout the competition. We had no prior experience in investments, evaluating the reliability of the ratios relevant to a stock’s performance, filtering out potential stocks to buy, contemplating on the stock performance and the return in our portfolio, some disagreements between each of us in the team were just some notable difficulties that we experienced. However, we did manage to resolve every one of these obstacles through learning and checking various resources, constantly discussing the team’s progress and the next steps, believing in ourselves and our abilities, and hoping that the portfolio would show good results for us.

Overall, I’ve learnt a lot from the competition, learning about investments (e.g., understanding how the stock market works, the many types of investment strategies commonly used, and how to buy and sell stocks) to learning how to collaborate with the team effectively to complete the necessary tasks (e.g., creating the mid and final reports, building the investment strategy and portfolio that suits the client’s goals, constantly communicating and discussing and resolving disagreements). Despite whatever the results are for my team, I am very grateful for this experience and would like to thank Mr. Reuben for the advice given, the school for the chance to enter the competition, and Wharton Business School for organizing this competition.

Bernadine Kayla Kristila – Grade 12 DP