Bermuda Institute teams eye success

One team in the KPMG Senior School Investment Challenge hopes to uphold their school’s legacy by winning the title this year. 

Profit Bulls and Tradewins are the two teams from Bermuda Institute. They both hope to come first or second in the challenge. 

Profit Bulls are made up of Tatiana King, 15 and Zharia Rollins, 17 as team captains, and  Terra Tuzo, 16, Jade Robinson, 16, Demiko James, 17, Daelan Richardson, 17 and Dejon Masters, 18. 

Tatiana explained where they decided to invest and why: “Mrs Warner, our teacher, had picked our stocks and we were doing really good for the first half of the whole competition, but then we started dropping down.

“What we started to do was invest in the penny stocks. They are cheap but do really well. 

“We tried to look at our stocks as much as possible and constantly checking the stocks and why they are going up and why they’re going down. If the company gets sued, the stock is going to go down.  If the company merges with another, it may go up.”

Some of the companies they have invested in include Cisco, Microsoft, Gap and KGC. 

Their local company is Marvell Technology Group.

Tatiana continued: “I am trying to look for new stocks and try and switch it up so that we can get ahead. 

“Even though we’re at a standstill right now, we’re hoping that we can find some great stocks and go up to the top.”

Tatiana said it was important to her and the team to finish at the top. 

“We hope to continue the legacy of Bermuda Institute for the past couple of years, except for last year, BI has come first or second and we hope to continue that legacy.”

Asked what advice they have received, Zharia said: “It was to go with the penny stocks and the ones that are less money so that we don’t have a great loss.”

Tatiana said her advice was not to pick out stocks that are trending such as Apple, KFC or McDonalds. 

Al the students say they are enjoying the project. 

Tradewins is made up of Torian Hill, 16, Shamar Jabbar, 16, team captain Vaughn Smith, 17, Tenneil Ratteray, 18 and Aric Wilson, 16. 

Tenneil said the group has invested in Apple, McDonalds and Yahoo among others. Vaughn added: “Basically, we invested in some technology, some food, websites and gaming sites.”

The local company is LOM Holdings. 

Vaughn continued: “It was basically what we figured would be the best at the time. 

“We were basically gambling high low. Hopefully it would go higher as time went on except for Apple because we bet high and over time, instead of going up, Apple actually dropped.”

Shamar added: “So that resulted in buying stocks in Walt Disney, Delta and travel companies.”

Torian said they made this decision because summer is coming and they expect the companies will have income and rising stocks. The team checks the stocks at least once a week along with their individual stocks they were assigned. 

Aric said: “We have our own individual stocks that we check every day but with the class stocks, we check once a week or so. 

“Every two weeks we might change stocks.”

Vaughn said sometimes the time changes how things go in the stock world. Sometimes since the time period from where we bet them to when we buy then now, there could be a change in pricing. 

“Netflix was $82 and now it’s $160-something. 

“Now, if we were to invest in some of those stocks, it wouldn’t have the same outcome.”

The team said they are enjoying the project and have learned so much. 

Vaughn said: “For me, what I enjoy about this is actually looking at my own personal stocks because you can see how the economy is going on.”

Aric added: “What I like the most was that in the beginning, I really didn’t know how to do stocks so now that we can actually choose a stock, I like the gamble because you have to invest and you’re not sure what you want to do.”