The KWHS Investment Competition is an initiative from Knowledge@Wharton High School of The Wharton School. It is a 12-week free investment competition for students and educators. While competing we learnt about teamwork, communication, risk, diversification, company analysis, industry analysis and investing from the competition. We as a team of 9 members were responsible for managing a portfolio of $100,000 in virtual cash using the OTIS online trading system. We had to learn concepts and develop strategies based on a case study involving a young, rich investor ( John Abhram). And at the end of the competition, we were required to submit a document detailing their recommended investment strategy.

Learning Outcomes:

L1 – Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

I learned a lot of things during the whole year of KWHS, one of the strengths that I established during the course was that I had the knowledge of when to take the stocks and when to sell it. This was my strength in my group and it was highly useful, one of the areas of growth was to cooperate with your team members, our geographical locations were different and were very far so we were not able to meet and so everybody had to buy the stocks which they think is okay from their locations and due to that we were facing losses too. Sometimes from me and sometimes from my partners. I had previously interned for a stock market company so I had some background knowledge which also helped me make my decisions and gain success/profit. Altogether it was a great experience, you can learn a lot.

L2 – Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken developing new skills

The first one was that the school registered the wrong email id of our group because of which we never received the messages from the competition management so we had to maintain communication with other groups and advisors to get the all the information on time so that was a bit tough. The second challenge that we faced the most was clashing of ideas/perspectives, some people used to say go for that or buy a stock of this company while some people used to say something else, their perspectives never matched and because of that our task became time-consuming. In the end, however, we all gathered up and did what was best for our team, everything was solved but the time that was wasted never came back.

L3 – Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

I had thought of taking this as my CAS activity and so had a plan in my mind. I made a timetable of when to work on this activity. It was planned as 3 days a week with 1:30 mins a day. The activity was moreover based on investment, I knew about it but I thought of researching it first and then deciding, so a lot of research had been taken place. Planning over here meant who will do what and to whom we should assign it. The decisions were taken by everybody through votes, work was assigned and then the group members also started working. Organising and Planning was my favorite part to play on a team and I think I have done a pretty great job.

L4 – Commitment to and perseverance

Commitment was highly required in this task. As there was a time difference for almost of 12 hours, group members had to buy stock in the night time. The activity required a lot of dedication too, it was all about how we invest and how to increase our company’s profit margin. It was difficult at times when we had school homework and other major things to do.

I use to sleep early so the task of buying stocks in the night was given to someone else. The task given to me was to find stocks of companies who are in profit right now or are continuing growth. I was able to complete my task successfully, commitment was highly required because we were given a time limit. In 5 days we had to complete this task. It was difficult at first but when I got to know how my other friends are doing then it became easy.

L5- Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively

Working collaboratively mattered as it was a team task. We had 9 people in our group, and each and every person had a skill that contributed to this project. I had the background knowledge of this topic which my peers didn’t so I contributed that. Working collaboratively was not always easy, we faced many difficulties:

1. Procrastination by some of our group member was not at all helpful, sometimes even I used to delay my work which I had to complete later and because of that we were not able to complete our task on time.
2. Misunderstanding due to a clashing of perspectives. This was not at all easy to solve. It led to many decisions being made that were not required for the project.

But in the end, we all worked out all the problems that we had and in the end, we worked cooperatively and completed our project successfully.

L7 – Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions

Ethics concern an individual’s moral judgments about right and wrong. Decisions taken by an organization highly decide the morals of the organization.

Many people in our group had contacts with the company members and they could easily get information from them but it was not right, it was just mean that we are dependent on them while this was our individual task and we had to it alone only help from our peers could be taken.

Some other group members use to copy our every step. They used to follow which shares are we taking, we used to do the research and all the hard work and then they use to just copy our steps. I used to just get so much frustrated because of this but in our group, our main objective/aim was to never cheat and do our work independently and we then forgot who all followed our steps and then we just focused on our work.