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Published 25 Apr 2023
Posted by khashanem

“Cape Capital”, a friend duo from the University of Cape Town (UCT) have won the monthly prize in the Speculator Portfolio University category of the JSE Investment Challenge for March. 

Designed to highlight the importance of investing and to increase financial literacy among South African school learners and tertiary students, the Investment Challenge provides participants with an opportunity to invest a virtual amount of R1 million on the stock market in actual JSE listed shares over a six-month period. Their performance is tracked and measured against other competitors, with top-performers eligible for outstanding prizes after the floor closes in September.  

Monthly prizes are awarded to the best performing teams and overall winners win their share of R1 million in prizes including a trip to an international stock exchange for participants in the university game.  

In just a month, team Cape Capital, involving Luke Roberts and Raphael Rubin, have shown that age-old wisdom of using basic fundamental approaches, mixed with the edge of technical analysis can be a steady strategy at a chance of winning the ultimate prize. 

Luke Roberts, a third year Bachelor of Business Science student specialising in Finance at UCT says their good start in the Investment Challenge showed that with well-timed moves, one can achieve substantial growth.  

“It’s still very early days, but indeed it has been a good start so far,” he says. “The challenge is only six months long, and so while we can be right with a valuation of a company, if our entry into position is poor, it may not play out positively for us through the competition.” 

Team Cape Capital won’t be resting on their laurels either because of the early lead, instead, this win has affirmed their cautious approach that also emphasises technical analysis as key to leading them in the right direction. 

“Given the current macro-economic climate, we’re also being very conservative. We’re only building positions in Top 40 companies, all of which are in defensive industries, and we have a limited use of warrants or futures, so we’re mainly using spot positions,” he explains. 

He continues, “We adopted the approach for a number of reasons – it was mainly the recession fears, the rampant global inflation, the Federal Reserve hiking the interest rate, the current de-dollarisation threat and the record central bank gold purchases in recent years really made us lean towards gold in some of our positions.” 

This year marks the competition’s 50-year milestone. 

For five decades, the Investment Challenge’s aim has been to drive financial literacy in high school as well as tertiary institutions and upskill young people in the fundamentals of investing. 

“As the world contends with a precarious economic environment, increased cost of living and geopolitical divisions and conflicts impacting global markets – now more than ever, we need to empower our youth with financial literacy skills that can create mass change in financial mind sets for future generations,” says Idris Seedat, Head of Transformation and CSI at the JSE says.  

High schools can enter one or more teams, with the challenge being open to all learners. A team has to consist of four members who are in Grades 8 to 12 and a teacher has to supervise each team over the period. University students can form teams with members registered with the same institution. Each team has to have a minimum of two and a maximum of four members. All students are eligible, regardless of their field of study. 

Roberts says the competition has only added fuel to a passion he already had for equities and the stock market since 2017. 

“I absolutely love checking up on the markets, or reading market-related news. It’s always been my personal dream to be an equity research analyst. I job-shadowed at Coronation (Fund Managers) in 2019 and that really sealed the deal for me on what I want to do,” he adds. 

Winners for the March 2023 monthly Investment Challenge competition include: 

Income category:  

MP Against All Odds from Mpumelelo Secondary School in Mpumalanga 

Equity portfolio:  

MCE- power rangers from Isilimela Comprehensive School in the Western Cape 

Speculator portfolio for schools: 

ACCP-Ansys from ACUDEO College Crystal Park in Gauteng 

ETF/ETN portfolio for schools 

ACCP-Red Bull Amaphiko Academy from ACUDEO College Crystal Park in Gauteng 

Speculator portfolio for universities: 

Cape Capital from the University of Cape Town, Western Cape 

ETF/ETN portfolio for universities: 

ru-vacay from Rhodes University, Eastern Cape 

To register for the competition, visit https://schools.jse.co.za/ for schools and https://university.jse.co.za/ for universities. To stay updated on monthly winner announcements and new developments, follow the competition’s social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok @jseinvestmentchallenge. 

 ENDS