Schools

Sharemarket Game news 

Meet the winners

Congratulations to our winners and to everyone who took part in Game 1, 2024. We hope students had fun and got first-hand experience on how the sharemarket works, learning valuable real-life investment skills along the way. Make sure you present students with a certificate of participation.

Remember, the Game only grows from your feedback. If you haven’t done so already, make sure you fill in our 5-minute survey and help us make the next Schools Sharemarket Game even more relevant and fun for your students. Plus you can enter the draw to win one of two $100 gift vouchers.

“During the last weeks, I watched as my profits grew and I moved towards the top of the leaderboard,” says Clay. “On the last day of trading, day I was very surprised to see my name next to the first ranking!”
 

100 percent – almost

Oscar-1, also from Byron Bay High School, was runner-up with a portfolio worth $64,784.51. Oscar, who now has four Sharemarket Games under his belt, decided to invest in companies with a market capitalisation of more than $1 billion and high potential for growth.

His investment in an energy company yielded close to a mind-blowing 100% profit in less than two months, pushing him into second position. But Oscar says he almost didn’t buy the stock.

“[It] had been on my watchlist since the start, but I initially hesitated to buy in due to its high price,” he admits. “After the game commenced, its price dropped consistently for three weeks, at which point I decided to invest.”

Oscar is using the research skills he’s developed in the Sharemarket Game in real life – recently purchasing some Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) after conducting extensive research.

“This [Sharemarket Game] experience has not only deepened my understanding of the stock market but has also instilled in me the importance of informed decision-making in financial investments,” he says.
 

From rocky road to final boost

In third place nationally is another Byron Bay High School student, Beau. The Year 12 Economics student ended the Game with a portfolio worth $64,480.23 – only a few hundred dollars ($304.28, to be precise) behind his fellow student, Oscar.

Beau picked his first two stocks based on analyst valuations. He choose the other three because of his personal interest in the dairy industry, and an affinity with a consumer brand.

Despite a rocky start, Beau doggedly held onto all of his shares. His persistence paid off, as three out of five of his companies performed strongly in the final weeks boosting to into the third spot. 

Beau plans to use the knowledge he’s gained through participating in four School Sharemarket Games to help him invest down the track.

“While I knew about the fundamentals of selecting and trading shares with a high profit potential, I learned more about market volatility in this Game,” he says.

Country-wide winners

We’d also like to acknowledge the fantastic achievements of all our state winners: 

James from Western Australia’s Mazenod College topped his state with a portfolio valued at $66,024.72. James used a risk-reward strategy to help maximise his potential profits by optimising his exposure to a nice industry within the energy arena.

"I enjoy investing in stocks and experimenting with strategies that allow me to better understand the real ASX share market and how it reacts to real world events"

Note that while technically James finished in second place on the leaderboard, his school won first prize in the last School Sharemarket Game. This means he’s not eligible for the main prize this time around.
 

Victoria’s winning participant, Lia_Oli (Liam and Oliver) from Camberwell High School, finished the Game with shares worth $63,310.20. The syndicate followed five rules – only investing in a maximum of two companies per sector, avoiding companies at their peak, researching recent news, setting goals for each company and putting a limit on the amount they were willing to pay per share. 

"We enjoyed participating in the game, it was a fun activity that incorporated the use of accounting theory into more practical activity." 
 

Our top Queenslander, Flynn, hails from Padua College. The Year 10 Economic student finished with a portfolio valued at $62,904.74. Flynn’s winning strategy was to choose stocks that had experienced a notable dip that he believed had potential for recovery. 

"My game plan was centred on identifying and seizing upon moments of market volatility to generate profitable outcomes."
 

Asha is Tasmania’s winning participant, wrapping up the Game with a portfolio worth $60,935.59. Asha aimed to buy good quality companies then hold them, avoiding excessive brokerage fees.

"I own shares myself and was interested in learning more about how it all worked. I enjoyed watching the shares fluctuate especially when they went up."
 

Topping South Australia with a portfolio of $60,307.20 was spoiltlime (aka Ilya). The Emmaus Christian College student chose to focus mainly on the materials sector because of its high growth potential. He also picked a few stocks from other sectors to diversify his portfolio.

"I found the game to be a fun, exciting but also educational experience as I could see, in live-time, rapid or minor market price movements in reaction to events throughout the day." 
 

Deakon-Dominik from Belconnen High School led the ACT with a portfolio of $57,301.56. The two Year 9 Business Studies students (who unsurprisingly are named Deakon and Dominik) chose to follow a high risk/high reward strategy. It helped them to win the $500 prize – and gave them bragging rights over their ACT peers.

"We bought our stocks when they hit a low and then waited for them to increase in value, we did this a couple of times." 

Ryan from Nightcliff Middle School was Northern Territory’s top participant. At the close of the Game, Ryan’s portfolio was worth $57,270.61 – down from a high of $58,766.00 but still leading the territory. Ryan’s strategy was to choose a ‘golden stock’ that would grow quickly, and achieve diversification across a range of sectors including an ETF focusing on global energy companies.

"The best advice I received was to not put all my eggs into one basket."

Other firsts

Our New Zealand winner was the fittingly named syndicate Top Guns from Aquinas College, Tauranga. The two Year 11 participants, Connor and Otis, created a very concentrated portfolio comprising gold, housing and banking stocks. As well as the glory of being New Zealand’s national winner, the team were also the first New Zealand team to be awarded a cash prize. Congratulations!

"After choosing these companies we sunk in the first week to a low of fourty-eight thousand but we held and did not sell. Within a few weeks most of our stocks had turned green we didn’t change our strategy from this point."
 

Finally, a huge shout-out to our first Peruvian winner, Lancelot from Colegio Peruano Britanico. The syndicate, comprising Marcio, Rodrigo and Salvador, were our highest ranking international participant for the Game, with a portfolio valued at $55,083.23. They chose to focus on growth stocks such as energy production and healthcare, avoiding blue chip stocks that were unlikely to rise much over the Game’s comparatively short timeframe.

"As a group we spent some days discussing what we should do with our current shares or decide on what companies to buy shares in."
 

In this newsletter, we review the basics to help them place their first trade.

To be able to complete this Game challenge, it is vital that your students take note of all these Game essentials:
 

Access and eligibility

Student login portal: Share this link with your students

Problems logging in: Please read ‘How to login’

Prize eligibility: To be eligible, they need to have purchased shares, within the Game, in four different companies over the Game Period. One buy transaction must have been completed by April 25.

Brokerage

In the Game your students will be paying brokerage. Brokerage is the fee a stockbroker charges when shares are bought or sold. Just like the real market, in the Game, every time you buy or sell you will be charged brokerage. Be aware of your brokerage costs if you trade regularly. In the Game, brokerage is $20 for trades up to $10,000 and for each trade over $10,000, brokerage is charged at the rate of 0.2% of the trade value.

Diversification rule 

In the Game your students cannot put all their money into buying just one company.

They can do this in real life if you wish; however, there is a belief that this is not the best thing to do as it is very high risk. 

In the Game they can only invest 25% (of their total portfolio value) in any one given company (this is called the diversification rule). When you go to place an order to buy shares in a company, the system will tell you the maximum of shares you can purchase based on the current market price and your portfolio value. You don’t have to buy that number - you can buy less but you can’t buy more. 

To diversify simply means to invest in different companies and/or different industry sectors that don’t tend to move in the same direction at the same time.

This will help reduce the risk of losing money. Let’s say you invested all of your $50,000 in one company and the shares in this company dropped by 30%. This would mean that your $50,000 investment is now worth only $35,000 – that’s a loss of $15,000. Whereas, if you invested in 4 companies (in different sectors with approximately $12,500 invested in each) and the other 3 companies are doing OK, that 30% loss is now only $3,750 – quite a difference.

This example shows how investing across a range of sectors or companies helps reduce your risk. However, also be careful of over diversifying (having just a few shares in a lot of different companies), because you will end up paying a lot of brokerage and if some companies do really well you want to own enough of them to make some good profits.

Dividends

In Australia, the end of the financial year (EOFY) is June 30. So most publicly listed Australian companies report their full-year earnings results in August and their half-year results in February. 

By law, companies listed on ASX must report their earnings, results, and forecasts to shareholders during each reporting season. 

Dividends are usually announced during reporting season so in the Game, one of your strategies might be to invest in those companies that have a dividend coming up, in order to take advantage of the additional cash.

Before doing this, it is important to understand what dividends are and how they work.

Have you decided when to take your profits?

If your shares rise by a certain percentage above your purchase price…

• Will you continue to hold them? 
  
• Or will you sell and take your profit so that you can invest in something else? If yes, at what point will you take your profit, e.g. % increase?

If the stock falls or is not performing as you would like, do you have a plan of when to sell? 

Have you or your team made any decisions regarding how low you are prepared for a share to go, before getting out? 

For example, you might set a certain percentage below your purchase price as the lowest you are prepared to let the share price fall before you sell your shares.

Also, if you decide to sell, what factors or indicators will you use to help you make the decision to step back in?

After answering these questions, and in light of the current market volatility (the price of a share moves significantly up or down), your students will be more prepared, less inclined to panic, and able to make the necessary decisions to stick to their plan. 
 

Avoiding simple mistakes

Here you have a  list of the most common mistakes we find syndicates making while participating in the Game. Let your students know this is worth a read, as it may help them avoid making some of these mistakes:

Purchasing small lots in multiple companies. 

And this is not just $20 when you buy, it is also $20 when you sell, so you need to consider this.

Not checking your order before submitting

It is important to set up the habit of always checking your order before you submit. Make yourself stop and read the preview order – review the number of shares you want, check it is the correct company, it is a market or limit order, at the price you want, and of course whether it is a BUY order or a SELL order. 

Get into the habit of checking each of these things because once your trade is submitted, it can be very difficult to get it back.

Placing your orders too far away

Often we get emails from students wondering why their order isn’t going through. Often what has happened is they have set their buy or sell price too far away from the market, for example, if the share price of a company is at $2.00 and you set a limit to buy your shares at $1.50 - you are going to have to wait until the price gets to or falls below $1.50 before your order is processed, which could be a very long time, if at all. 

If your limit order to sell is set at $3.00 – again, you will be waiting until the market hits this price or above before your order is processed. 

Placing an order at 4.00 pm for the next day.

Take note that although the market closes at 4 pm there is a clearing period between 4 pm and 4.12 pm where orders will still be processed. If you are wanting to place an order for the next day, make sure it is after 4.12 pm.

Buying just to get the dividend.

So if you buy a company based on the dividend, remember, on the ex-date, the price of the share is likely to fall by the amount of the dividend. 

Buying to get the dividend and then selling on the ex-date, will mean you have lost any benefit the dividend gave you as the stock fell by that amount. 

It helps to do your research and be sure you are happy with a company and not just base your buying decision only on the dividend.

Other ideas

You can create your own sharemarket vocabulary games and tasks using the ASX glossary.