KPMG Investment Challenge: Berkeley teams show gains in tough month

It was more up than down for the 16 teams involved in the KPMG Secondary Schools Investment Challenge.  

Nine of the 16 teams lost money in the third reporting period.

However, two of the three teams at the Berkeley Institute managed to surge ahead.

And the one that didn’t, Berkeley Finance, held onto its second place position in the tables. 

The majority of the students are new to the challenge and are learning new things every week. The groups also have student consultants who to help to research as part of their training to compete next year. 

Dollars and sense

Dollars and Sense is made up of Guisti Clarke, Zariah DeSilva, Ranisha Simmons and Dominic Tessitore. 

The group is new to the investing arena and say they are doing pretty well so far.

In the third reporting period they increased their portfolio by $282.

Ranisha said: “I’m still learning what makes a company a good company to invest in or how to actually find a stock that’s good or bad.

Guisti added: “We’re trying to invest in more penny stocks rather than the big ones because you can’t go wrong with penny stocks.”

Zariah said: “There’s a little more capital and the loss isn’t as great.”

Some of their companies include Nestle, AMD and MIHI Holdings. Locally, they have invested in LOM.

Each team has to invest in at least one local company on the Bermuda Stock Exchange.  

Zariah said: “We’re learning to do a lot more research on each stock and look at the background and the history and its progress. We check them every week, sometimes every few days.”

Berkeley Finance

Berkeley Finance is comprised of Ryan Robinson Perinchief and Jashonae Smith-Tannock. 

The pair are in second place and hope they continue to do well. They are only $257 behind first place T & Ls eKard Investors from CedarBridge Academy.

Ryan said: “We’re learning how to research and strategize. Our strategy is to research. We’ve invested in everything from Visa to Best Buy to Tesla.”

Their local company is XL.

Asked how they chose the companies, Ryan said: “We look at certain companies and predict whether we think they would grow in the future and make a decision based on that.”

Speaking on the competition, Jashonae said: “I’m looking forward to the prospect of possible victory. 

“We look forward to the competition to see what they have.”

Money Chasers

Money Chasers is made up of Arron Lindsay, Jordan Payne and Ashley De Sa.

They moved up two spots to ninth in the rankings this month as their portfolio increased by $406.

Jordan explained how the challenge has been going for them. 

“It’s been very interesting because we have a challenge ourselves with our team members. It’s been a test to devotion really.”

Arron said: “We haven’t really stuck to a single market. We have invested in not so well known companies and we also have big ones like Amazon.

“We have definitely diversified it.”

Ashley said: “There’s a lot more involved with it than I previously thought.”

Jordan added: “The best part of it is seeing our stocks do well. That affects us greatly.”

Jordan said the team’s strategy is “to look at a stock to see how it performs.”

Arron added: “We look at the future of the stock, not just how it’s doing now.”

Money Chasers’ local company is Butterfield Bank.