Surpassing thousands of students around the world when participating in a virtual stock trading competition, recently, Do Thai Toan (student of Olympia High School) became one of 25 excellent candidates to receive an invitation to the US to participate in the live trading round.
This is a playground organized by Stevens Business School - ranked 77th among the best business schools in the US (according to US News & World Report 2023), for 10th and 11th grade students worldwide to participate.
In the top 25 excellent "traders" who made it to round 3, Thai Toan ranked 6th in terms of achievements when he increased his "assets" from 1 million to 7.5 million USD within a month.
Interested in learning about financial knowledge, since 8th grade, Toan started reading information related to the impact of FED (US Federal Reserve) policies on the global economy. By the end of December 2023, through a friend, Toan learned about this stock trading competition. Feeling interested, the male student registered to participate.
The contest consists of 3 rounds, of which round 1 has nearly 1,200 candidates registered. The organizers will provide some situational questions, candidates must come up with appropriate solutions. According to Toan, this part of the contest is not too "puzzling" because before that, he had learned about securities knowledge through books, newspapers, the internet; watched investment analysis and strategies; talked with many people with expertise in the financial field.
In addition, in the subject of Economics and Law, Macroeconomics learned at school also provides Toan with a foundation of understanding about the economy, monetary policy, how the market operates and the principles of investment, savings, financial management, etc.
“Before that, in Economics and Law, we also had a research project on big companies in the US like Coca-Cola or Amazon. This helped me have an overview of the companies before deciding to buy any stocks.”
After passing the first round, Toan and more than 800 other contestants entered the online trading round. In this round, the competition organizers built a virtual stock exchange using real market fluctuation data. Each candidate will receive 1 million USD to build their own investment portfolio. The organizers' requirement is that within 1 month, the contestants must achieve the highest possible profit.
Since the US stock market starts trading from 10pm to the next morning Vietnam time, Toan usually has to spend the time from 10pm to 2am to monitor volatile stocks. The rest of the time, the male student places automatic orders for stable stocks.
In the early days, Toan felt lucky because “almost every stock I bought was profitable”. The male student used key indicators to analyze and choose a portfolio of stocks to invest in such as RSI (relative strength index), EMA (exponential moving average), Volume (trading volume), P/E (market price of stock/earnings per share)…
In addition, Toan's investments are also based on fundamental analysis of the business and on facts or related news.
“For example, I wouldn’t buy a meat company’s stock when the vegan trend is on the rise. I also wouldn’t buy a stock when the number of shares outstanding is high but the trading volume is low. Trading volume is also a factor in deciding whether to buy that stock or not.” In the first week, Toan’s account grew to $300,000.
However, according to Toan, sometimes the beauty index is not everything, but needs to be based on many other factors, including market manipulation. The following week, the market began to decline. At first, Toan still "held out" hoping that the green color would soon return. But later, the male student was dominated by emotions, so he did not follow the plan, and had to accept "cutting losses" on all stocks. This caused Toan to lose millions of USD and fall down the rankings.
“After that moment, I learned a lesson about discipline in investing, risk management and effective emotional management. When investing, I also need to combine many skills such as technical analysis, market news analysis, and short-term corporate news analysis.”
Gradually, the codes recovered one by one. Thanks to the previous big lesson, Toan changed his investment strategy and increased his account to 7.5 million USD by the end of the trading period. This also helped Toan enter the top 25 excellent candidates who received an invitation to the US to attend the live trading round.
In round 3 taking place next April, candidates will attend lectures on professional financial information systems; the latest trends in the financial industry and take a live stock trading exam under real market conditions.
Busy preparing for standardized tests to apply for studying abroad, Thai Toan is not sure whether to go to the US to participate in the live round or not. However, the experiences in this international playground have helped him gain perspectives on the stock market, the impact of inflation on the financial market, and how to manage finances and risk.
As Toan’s Economics teacher, Ms. Ngo Minh Trang assessed Toan as a student who always actively deepens knowledge related to macroeconomics. “He often asks difficult questions. Because he reads a lot, Toan has good thinking, assesses market situations very sharply and has a certain depth,” Ms. Trang commented.
After the competition, Toan felt more confident about the path he wanted to pursue. He hopes that next year's admissions season will see him pass the Finance major at the top business school in the US.
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