Four grade 11 Kingsway High School pupils put their accounting skills to the test when they finished as runners-up in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) Investment Challenge.
The JSE Investment Challenge is a game that aims to teach South African pupils and students about investing on the JSE and the larger role that such investment plays in the country’s economy.
The challenge helps those participating learn about the fundamentals of investment strategy and encourages them to research and strategise issues surrounding the trading of JSE-listed shares. Participants test their share trading skills through an ongoing annual simulated ‘ghost trading’ programme.
Each team is given an imaginary sum of R1-million to invest in JSE-listed shares. Their performance is tracked and measured in a competition against other teams taking part in the challenge.
Kailash Rajh, Brandon Hall, Thom Reimeringer-Visser and Jason le Roux returned a profit of about R100,000 between 1 March and 31 September, when the challenge is run.
“There are three categories – income, equity and speculate,” said accounting teacher, HM Bridgmohan, who has been Kingsway’s co-ordinator for the challenge for the 10 years he’s been a teacher at the school. “I entered two teams of four pupils each in the low-risk income category.
This is the first time Kingsway was in the top five, out of 7,200 pupils from 302 participating schools.
“The winning team and myself were flown to Johannesburg on Friday, 24 October for the prizegiving and it was only announced at the awards evening that we were runners-up. It was a total surprise.”
The team won certificates, a trophy and R14,250 allocated as shares to the winners and their school.
The challenge has been creating interest in the dynamic environment of the stock market for 41 years.
The bug has bite and four pupils are keen to continue speculating – this time with real money.
