Your first week in the Student Investor Challenge

The first week of any competition feels like the most important one, and it almost never is. In the Student Investor Challenge, your job in those opening days is not to win — it is to understand what you are holding, get comfortable with the two portfolios, and make a few sensible decisions you can explain to the rest of your team. Everything after that gets easier.

This guide walks through that first week in plain terms, so a brand-new team knows exactly where to start. If you have not read the mechanics yet, keep the how it works page open in another tab — everything here is grounded in it.

Day one: log in and look before you leap

When you first sign in, resist the urge to buy anything. Spend the first session simply reading the screen. You are running two separate portfolios, each starting with a virtual £100,000, and they behave very differently:

• Active Investor — you can trade this book every day. It rewards attention and quick thinking, and it punishes fiddling for the sake of it.
• Strategic Investor — you get only a limited number of trades each month, so every decision has to be one you are happy to live with for weeks.

Understanding that split is the whole point of the game, and it is worth slowing down for. If the two-portfolio idea is new to you, our explainer on what a portfolio really is unpacks why the challenge asks you to run both at once.

Day two: agree how your team will actually work

The Challenge is played in teams of four, and the teams that do well are almost never the ones where one person makes every call. Before you place a single trade, agree a few simple ground rules:

• Who watches what. Split the market so nobody is duplicating effort — one person on banks and energy, another on retail and tech, and so on.
• How you decide. Will you need two people to agree before a trade goes in? A quick group chat before market close? Decide now, while it is calm.
• When you meet. A ten-minute check-in a couple of times a week beats a frantic scramble on the last day.

None of this is glamorous, but a team that talks to each other holds its nerve far better when a price moves against them.

Day three: your first Active trades

Now you can start putting money to work in the Active book. Pick a small number of companies you actually recognise and can say something about — not a random spread of tickers you have never heard of. For each one, write down a single sentence: why do we own this? If you cannot finish that sentence, you are not ready to buy it yet.

Two things trip up almost every new team here. The first is over-trading — buying and selling constantly because it feels productive. The second is reading a share price the wrong way. If a stock “up 40p” versus “up 4%” feels confusing, our short guide on how to read a share price without panicking will save you a lot of second-guessing.

Day four: set up your Strategic book properly

Because your Strategic trades are limited, this book deserves slower, quieter thinking. Ask a different question here: would we be happy owning this company if the market closed for a month and we could not touch it? That single filter cuts out most of the noise and leaves you with a handful of solid, boring, sensible holdings — which is exactly what you want.

It often surprises new teams, but across a full season the patient Strategic book quietly outperforms the busy Active one more often than not. Do not treat it as an afterthought.

Day five: mind the Windfall Tax on idle cash

Here is the rule that catches everyone at least once. If you leave more than £15,000 sitting in cash in either portfolio, a daily Windfall Tax of £1,000 is deducted. It is not a punishment for the sake of it — it mirrors a real lesson: money parked and doing nothing is money quietly losing ground.

So by the end of your first working week, aim to have most of your virtual £100,000 invested in each book. You do not have to be fully committed on day one — but do not sit on a pile of cash for a fortnight either. If the logic behind the tax interests you, we wrote a whole piece on why the Windfall Tax exists.

Day six: find yourself on the league table

Once you have started trading in both books, your team appears on the Combined League Table, ranked on your performance across the Active and Strategic games together. With thousands of teams competing, your first position will probably be somewhere in the vast middle — and that is completely normal.

Treat the table as feedback, not a verdict. Positions move every day as teams buy, sell and let their portfolios run. A team sitting in the thousands in week one can climb steadily into the semi-final places over the season. Checking your rank obsessively will only tempt you into panic trades.

Day seven: review, do not rip it up

End your first week with a short team review. Look back at those one-sentence reasons you wrote for each holding. Are they still true? If a company reported bad news or the story has changed, that is a fair reason to act. “The price went down a bit and it made us nervous” is not.

The goal of week one is a portfolio you understand and can defend — not a perfect one. If you have that, you have started better than most.

What the first week is really teaching you

Every rule you have just met exists to build a habit: invest with a reason, stay patient, and keep your money working. Those are the same habits that decide who reaches the four-week semi-finals and, eventually, the eight-team national final. If you want to see where this all leads, our look at how the semi-finals work shows the road ahead — and the prizes waiting at the end of it.

Frequently asked questions

Do we need any real money to take part?

No. Both portfolios are funded with virtual money — a simulated £100,000 each. Nothing you do involves real cash, and there is nothing to pay to play.

How many trades should we make in the first week?

There is no target. A few considered trades in the Active book and one or two long-term picks in the Strategic book is plenty. Over-trading is a classic early mistake, not a sign of a strong start.

What if we join a few days late?

Teams that start trading late have their opening balance index-linked to the FTSE 100, so a slow start does not put you at a built-in disadvantage. Get your first trades in as soon as you can.

Why is some of our cash being taxed?

Holding more than £15,000 in cash in either portfolio triggers the daily £1,000 Windfall Tax. Put that cash to work and it disappears.