School pupils make big market gains in JSE/Liberty Life Investment Challenge
High volatility and market nervousness may make life tough for investment professionals, but some school pupils seem unperturbed by the difficulties, according to the latest results in the monthly JSE/Liberty Life Investment Challenge.
Top performers for May in the speculator category for aggressive investors achieved 10.36% growth for the month while the equity category winners made a 5.88% gain. The top income portfolio for May achieved a real income of R8 840 while growing the underlying portfolio by R9 143, easily outstripping the growth target of R5 000.
All ‘ghost traders’ start with a notional portfolio of R1 million to be used in virtual online transactions.
Howard Fox (pictured), Divisional Director for Marketing at Liberty says: “We continue to experience testing market conditions, what with regular interest rate increases and concerns about the sustainability of the phenomenal growth within the resources sector.
“Yet many of our school teams continue to show sound judgment whether the requirement is income generation or capital appreciation. This may be ghost trading, but the lessons are real enough. These young people obtain important insights into investment risk, market volatility and the effects of interest rate movements on the economy.
“It is important that these lessons are absorbed by the teams as our country strives for long-term growth. It is also pleasing that one of the winners – Phandulwazi Agric High School – entered via our corporate adopt-a-school programme, an initiative to encourage participation by schools in disadvantaged communities.”
May winners were …
Income portfolio: Money Magnets, Phandulwazi Agric High School, Alice, Eastern Cape (Nobulali Marambana, Anele Nokwayi, Sinesipho Dondashe, Ukho Ntikinca; teacher, Nosimphiwe Blie/Ralph Spiers).
Equity portfolio: The Titan Group of Investments, Crawford College, Sandton (Alexander Levin, Joshua Greenberg, Michael Angelides, Kabeer Shark; teacher, Melanie Dillon).
Speculator portfolio: Financial Solutions, Grey High School, Port Elizabeth (Martin Jansen, Duran Naidoo, Rushil Manga, Francois Greef; teacher, Lorraine Wilson).
§ The JSE/Liberty Life Investment Challenge runs until September and also includes a universities competition. The competition is linked to an adopt-a-school initiative to enable the participation of schools in disadvantaged communities.
