Wharton Investment Competition
The Wharton Global High School Investment Competition is a free, experiential investment challenge for high school students (9th to 12th grade) and teachers. Students work in teams of four to seven, guided by a teacher as their advisor, and have access to an online stock market simulator. Together, they learn about strategy-building, teamwork, communication, risk, diversification, company and industry analysis, and many other aspects of investing.
About The competition
Teams examine a short case study featuring a potential client (a real Wharton graduate working in business) and are tasked with collaborating to meet that client’s long-term investment goals as they try to win his or her business. Equipped with an approved stock and exchange-traded fund (ETF) list (domestic and international) and the Wharton Investment Simulator (WInS), which allows them to buy and sell stocks and ETFs, over the course of 10 weeks students develop an investment strategy, analyze industries and companies, and build a portfolio using $100,000 in virtual cash. Winners are selected on the strength and articulation of their team strategies, not on the growth of their portfolios, which is a key differentiator between this investment challenge and others. During the competition each team submits two deliverables.
Final reports are reviewed by a team of judges, who select 50 semifinalist teams. Those teams are invited to present their strategies to a panel of expert judges at the virtual Semifinals. The top 10 teams from the Semifinals move on to the Global Finale at Wharton in Philadelphia.
