Saltus Girls see solid connection in KeyTech, Diago

Saltus Grammar School has two teams looking to come out on top in this year’s KPMG Senior School Investment Challenge.

The boys’ team is the Wall Street Warriors made up of Chris Simons, Kyle Eve-Townsend, Nathaniel Hartwig, Daniel Oatley and Nicholas Pell.

The girls’ team is Stock Chasers and features Ellie Wollmann, Samantha Hillen and Julia Lines.

While a some of the boys participated last year, this is the first time for all three girls.

Daniel explained how things are going for his team.

“We were doing very well and then two stocks dropped.”

The Wall Street Warriors were one of the few teams that saw their value drop from the first trade date earlier in November. They ended up losing nearly $1,400 in value their portfolio declined form $50,967 to $49,369.

Daniel said: “It was really bad. We lost a lot with Tesla.”

Nicholas explained the car company found a design flaw after there were a few crashes, which caused the stock to plummet.

Daniel continued: “Even though we made a loss with Tesla, we made a great gain with NetFlicks.”

He added his group have taken the money and run as they sold NetFlicks at a profit. 

Daniel added: “We’re always looking for other companies that have a promise to grow. We look at historical data as well.”

Nicholas spoke about other companies they have invested in.

“We did quite a bit of seasonal investing, things for Christmas like JC Penny and also in some developing markets.”

Kyle said the Wall Street Warriors also invested in Chipotle, a Mexican casual dining chain.

Each of the teams have to invest in one local company as part of the KPMG rules for the contest. The Warriors are hoping to power up with the Ascendant Group, the parent company of BELCO and Bermuda Gas among others.

Nathaniel said they chose Ascendant because it is a monopoly in Bermuda.

Stock Chasers

Ellie, Samantha and Julia are very new to investing and are just hoping to make some money.

They have invested in Disney World, Toronto Dominion Bank, Panera Bread and Diageo, a liquor company.

Samantha said: “We haven’t actually worked on a strategy yet. We were confused about the rules.

“We thought we had to stay on a stock but apparently we can have ten stocks a month.

“None of us have ever done this before so we’re learning.”

In spite of that, the Stock Chasers saw their portfolio rise as they nearly increased their portfolio by $1,000. They now sit at $50,715 and in eighth place.

Ellie said: “We chose Diageo because with Christmas coming up, a lot of people would be drinking. We did a lot of things to do with the holidays.”

Their local company is KeyTech, which is the parent company of BTC and Logic but also owns a percentage of Bermuda CableVision and CellOne.

“They were doing well so we thought why not”, Samantha explained.

As far as their style of investing, Samantha said: “We’re trying to take some risks while also using some companies that we know will make us money.”

Julia said: “We’re looking for stocks that will have short-term growth.

“Disney is always making movies and always producing different things. They go up and down quite a bit depending on what projects they’re doing.

“We also have Target and that went up after Black Friday.”