How to Run Student Investor at Your School: a Teacher’s Guide

What the challenge involves

The Student Investor Challenge runs over three rounds and is built around teams of four students, each managing two virtual portfolios across the competition. Teams from schools outside the UK take part in round one and compete for the International Online Trader of the Year prize; UK teams are eligible for all prizes, including the semi-finals and the live national final.

The competition is open to teachers too — you can enter yourself and trade against your own students in round one. You are not eligible for the prizes, but it is a genuinely useful classroom dynamic.

See the full rules and portfolio mechanics for current dates and registration details.

What you need to register

To sign up a team you need two things:

• A Teacher Reference Number (TRN) — a seven-digit number issued by The London Institute of Banking & Finance (LIBF). If you do not already have one, LIBF can provide it.
• Four students — you choose who joins.

Registration opens before round one. Check the rules page for the current window. Once registered, your team can log in and start trading on live London Stock Exchange prices immediately.

Picking your four students

The most effective teams are not necessarily the ones with the most financial knowledge — they are the ones with the most useful mix of personalities. A team that works well together tends to have:

• One student who follows the financial news and brings ideas in.
• One who is methodical with numbers and checks the portfolios regularly.
• One decisive trader who is comfortable pulling the trigger on a trade.
• One patient thinker who resists the urge to over-react to short-term noise.

You can enter more than one team from your school — useful for a full class or an investing club where you want everyone running their own portfolio. Each team is independent, with its own login and its own position in the league tables.

The two portfolios — and why they teach different skills

Every team runs two separate portfolios simultaneously, each starting with a virtual £100,000. They are deliberately different, and each teaches something the other cannot.

Active Investor

The Active portfolio is for daily trading. Teams can react to news, earnings announcements, interest rate decisions, and broader market moves as they happen. It rewards attention and quick thinking, and it is where students most naturally engage early in round one. The downside is that over-trading is easy and expensive — a useful lesson in itself.

Strategic Investor

The Strategic portfolio imposes a monthly trade limit. That constraint is the point: it forces teams to research before they act, hold their nerve through short-term volatility, and think in months rather than days. It is where long-term thinking is rewarded, and it is often the portfolio that quietly determines who reaches the semi-finals.

A common pitfall is forgetting the Strategic portfolio entirely. The Active book gets most of the attention because it changes daily. Remind students to review both. You can read more about the contrast in the differences between the two portfolios.

The Windfall Tax — a built-in lesson about idle cash

Both portfolios carry the same rule: if either portfolio holds more than £15,000 in cash, a daily Windfall Tax of £1,000 is deducted. The rule exists to teach a core investing principle — idle money has an opportunity cost. Leaving cash on the sidelines to protect a lead is a strategy that quietly backfires.

This is one of the competition’s best teaching moments. When a team asks why their score dropped overnight, and the answer is “you were holding too much cash,” the concept of opportunity cost sticks in a way a textbook definition never quite does.

Late starters get a fair chance

If your school registers after round one has opened, you are not at a disadvantage. Teams who start trading late have their opening balance index-linked to the FTSE 100 from the round-one start date. The competition stays fair regardless of when you join.

How to build it into your timetable

You do not need a separate unit or a double lesson. One session a week — even a part of one — is enough to keep teams engaged and learning throughout round one.

A suggested weekly rhythm:

• 10 minutes checking portfolio values and the league table — who moved, and why did it happen?
• 10 minutes on one market concept or news story relevant to a holding.
• The rest is trade time — teams discuss, decide, and execute.

The challenge connects naturally across the curriculum. Business Studies and Economics are the obvious fits (supply and demand, monetary policy, corporate reporting), but Maths teachers will find rich material in percentages, compound growth, and probability. PSHE and Citizenship can use it as a financial literacy anchor.

For a worked example of a single-lesson plan, see how to run the challenge in one lesson a week.

The path from round one to the national final

Getting to the semi-finals (500 UK teams selected)

The 500 semi-finalists are chosen by four separate routes — and this is worth explaining to students, because different routes reward different risk approaches:

1. Top 250 teams on combined portfolio performance (Active + Strategic).
2. From the rest: top 100 on Active Investor alone.
3. From the rest: top 100 on Strategic Investor alone.
4. Finally: the top 50 teams by January gain on their Active Investor portfolio — a route in for teams who start slowly and then surge.

The fourth route is particularly interesting to discuss in class. A team that has been cautious early can still reach the semi-finals by backing bold, well-researched positions in January. It is a practical demonstration of why staying in the game matters. See how the semi-finals work for the full detail.

The semi-final (4 weeks, online)

The semi-final runs for four weeks entirely online — no travel required. Each week, teams predict the Friday closing prices of a set of selected assets. Points are awarded for accuracy and for how long the prediction is held before Friday. A team’s final score is the sum of their best three weeks out of four, which means a single difficult week is discarded.

That “drop the worst week” rule is a small but significant lesson in risk management: staying composed through a poor week is better than abandoning a strategy. It also makes a good weekly exercise — track your class’s predictions against the actual Friday closes and discuss what moved prices and why.

The national final (8 teams, live)

The eight strongest teams from the semi-finals are invited to a live national final, where they take on a set of business challenges rather than purely portfolio performance. The winning team earns a week-long, all-expenses-paid educational trip to New York for the whole team — and their teacher.

What your students can win

The prize structure rewards the full competition, not just the final. See every prize on offer — here is a summary:

• 1st place: An all-expenses-paid week in New York, plus a £1,000 scholarship each (applicable towards a degree at LIBF).
• 2nd place: A VIP London trip plus a £750 scholarship each.
• 3rd place: A VIP London trip plus £100 spending money per member.
• Online Trader of the Year: Awarded for standout online trading performance.
• International Trader of the Year: For non-UK teams only — the best combined round-one performance wins £100 per team member.

Note: apart from the International Online Trader of the Year prize, only UK teams are eligible for the semi-finals and main prizes.

Common pitfalls to flag early

A few patterns come up repeatedly, and catching them early saves your team places in the league tables:

• Hiding in cash. Holding more than £15,000 in either portfolio triggers the Windfall Tax immediately. Brief your students on this before they log in for the first time. See five common mistakes in round one for the full list.
• Ignoring the Strategic Investor portfolio. It is easy to focus only on the Active book. Students who neglect the Strategic portfolio tend to find they have left points on the table by the time the semi-final selection runs.
• Only reacting to big market drops. Volatile moments attract attention, but steady compounders — companies growing earnings quarter after quarter — often do more for a long-term portfolio. This is the Active vs Strategic contrast in action.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a background in finance to enter?

No. The challenge is designed to teach, not to test prior knowledge. The game mechanics — the Windfall Tax, the trade limit on the Strategic portfolio, the league tables — are the curriculum. Your job is mostly to ask “why?” and let students argue it out.

Can I enter more than one team from my school?

Yes. You can register multiple teams. This is particularly useful for a whole class or an investing club where you want everyone to have their own portfolio.

Is there a cost to take part?

No. The challenge is free for UK schools.