Junior Trader is getting bigger this year.
We’re welcoming schools from across the UK and beyond, teachers can enter their own teams, I’ll be putting more than 30 years of investment experience to the test, and ChatGPT will have some AI competition of its own as Claude joins us for the first time. See attached “AI” cartoon.
So who will make the best investment decisions?
That is a very different question from asking who will make the most money. Speaking of which, our funded place bursary is now open to school and individual applicants to this year.
Junior Trader has never been about encouraging young people to speculate. We are not a dealing simulator. The competition is designed to get students thinking about businesses, markets and the world around them, and then making considered investment decisions based on what they discover.
This year, teams will be researching companies across food, fashion and online retail over the crucial Christmas trading period. They will need to look beyond the share price and think about the businesses themselves and this year from through the lens of a particular type of investor. Leading the valuation debate at the moment, I am allowing ChatGPT and Claude to enter. Why not?
What are consumers spending their money on, or not? How are economic conditions affecting different retailers? What happens when a company issues a trading update? Which businesses are gaining market share, and which are losing? How much does management matter? And what could go wrong?
There will is no single answer. A market is a place for debate, not answers.
That is where the teamwork comes in. Students research their companies, discuss different views and agree their investment decisions together. At the end of the competition, they produce a short investment report explaining what they did, why they did it and what they learned.
Every team receives personalised written feedback with JT.
I’ll be entering again, drawing on a career spent in investment and financial markets. ChatGPT will be back, and this year Claude will be given exactly the same challenge. Teachers can also form their own teams and compete against their students.
Can experience outperform enthusiasm? Will AI identify something the humans miss? Will ChatGPT and Claude reach the same conclusions when looking at the same companies? Can a group of sixth-form students make better decisions than all of us?
We will find out.
A good investment can lose money. A bad investment can make money. Markets have an irritating habit of making people look clever or foolish in the short term, irrespective of the quality of the original decision.
Our #TradeSafe approach has always been at the heart of Junior Trader. Young people are growing up with unprecedented access to trading apps, financial influencers and online investment content. We want them to understand that responsible investing is very different from gambling on the next share price movement.
Junior Trader develops commercial awareness, teamwork, communication and judgement. It gives students something real to discuss at university or job interviews and, for those considering careers in finance or business, an opportunity to start understanding how markets actually respond to events.
Most importantly, it gets them talking.
Talking about companies, the economy, about risk and talking about why two intelligent people can look at exactly the same information and reach completely different conclusions.
This year, those conversations will be taking place in more schools and involving more students, teachers and, for the first time, two competing AI models.
And there’s still time to get your school involved.
We’re currently arranging introductory lectures for November and December, with schools from across the UK and beyond welcome to take part. Teams can be as small as one student, teachers can enter too, and every student team receives personalised feedback at the end of the competition.
If you’re a teacher, parent or student and think Junior Trader should be in your school, get in touch.
Let’s get talking
