Marlborough College Malaysia IB Pupils become International Share Traders of the Year!
Edward Chai, Richard Lai, Andrew Yeow and Jack Hobby have done Marlborough College Malaysia proud. They have beaten over 8,700 other teams from the UK and around the world to become 6th overall and the top non-UK school international stocks and shares trading team. Each year, the UK’s Institute of Fiscal Studies runs an online share trading game known as Student Investor. Teams of four students are given a virtual £100,000 (that’s roughly RM550,000 or SGD205,000) that they can “invest” in the UK stock market.
Over a period of about three months, the students could invest their virtual cash in real shares and the actual share prices were used to calculate either profit or loss. There were strict rules about what could and could not be purchased.
It was quite clear from early on in the exercise that this would be one of the teams to beat as they made their way into the top ten from the very first week. They maintained their position in the top ten throughout the competition and were consistently the top performing non-UK school. What makes this achievement even more remarkable is that for the entirety of the competition the team have been on an eight hour time difference meaning that the UK markets have been open while our team were asleep!
In the end their portfolio value reached £198,353.08, nearly doubling their money in three months.
The Marlborough College Malaysia team that aced it: (Left to Right): Jack Hobby, Andrew Yeow, Edward Chai and Richard Lai
Winning team-member Richard Lai said, “The whole competition has been a huge amount of fun. Every time we got a chance we would check our portfolio and read the economic news to help inform our purchases”. Edward Chai said, “It was fun risking the money” but he feels that it would have been different had it been real. He went on to say, “You take more risks when you know it’s only virtual money, if that had been a real pot of cash, I think we might have been a lot more cautious.”
Jack Hobby, who has transferred from Marlborough College UK to Marlborough College Malaysia for the Sixth Form was pleased to come ahead of his friends back in the UK: “it was a great feeling to beat the Marlborough College UK team – it was a sterling effort!”
Andrew Yeow says getting involved in the competition has helped him with his IB Economics course: “I now feel I am more worldly with my economic understanding and this competition has encouraged me to read more economic news.”
The competition which is sponsored by Bloomberg, the FTSE and AXA Insurance has awarded the team with £100 (530 RM) each as a prize.
Marlborough College Malaysia is a British boarding and day school based in Iskandar, Johor. Located within a beautiful 90 acre campus, it offers a Preparatory School for pupils aged between four and thirteen and a Senior School for pupils aged thirteen to eighteen. The College offers the IGCSE and IB examinations.