by Neil Sehgal ’17, News Editor

Each semester, hundreds of US students from both the upper and lower school compete in the Ohio Stock Market Challenge. Students are given $100,000 in virtual currency and manage a portfolio for 10 weeks, investing this money by buying and selling stocks in real time. But with such a volatile and turbulent January, how can one invest wisely? Speaking to past winners, it seems there are different levels of complexity that one can have when approaching the Stock Market Challenge.

Samir Vasavada, a sophomore, says he came in first place in the state a few years ago and to do this, he looked at social noise. Samir said he focused on the social noise around fuel cell stocks that had a low price. “When you look at social noise and the stocks low and then you look at increasing social noise that’s related to other stocks that are bigger, the stocks going to go up a lot,” Samir said. “You have to a stable market ratio even though you’re in a penny stock market.”

However, Samir’s complicated strategy is not the only way to do well. Joey Schmidt came in third place in the most recent competition and he had a strategy even before the competition started. Joey said that he “bought some pretty go to stocks” that he had already determined before the contest started. He also said he did not make many trades either. He said, “since the market was pretty volatile, we kinda tried to ride everything out. We held on to them for the entire contest and didn’t make any other trades.” He also said that the stocks he picked were not that special either. Joey simply chose generic tech companies like Google and Tesla. He said that if he could give one piece of advice it would be to not trade to quickly. “If something goes down don’t just trade it away. Just hold on to it and it will eventually rid back up,” said Joey. Joey also put back all of the money he won into the community. “I already spend it at the vending machine,” he said.

Herbert Crowther, a second place winner in 2011, had even simpler advice. All he did was choose stocks randomly. “We spent all our money on a random ticker and it went up a lot and we won. That’s it,” he said.

It seems there is no single way to win the Stock Market Challenge. Rohan Garg, a second place winner in 2013, had perhaps the best advice. “Buy low, sell high,” he said.

The next competition begins on February 8.