The Trading Game, by HEC Finance Club

WHAT IS THE TRADING GAME?

The Trading Game is an annual contest organized each year by the HEC Finance Club. The event lasts a month, and it gathers hundreds of people to race each other to the top. The trader that manages to outrun all the others gets a very fancy prize, and so do the other contenders that perform well with the initial USD 100’000 that are given to each candidate. Also, rewards will be given every week to the leader. Of course, it is not real money, everyone will be using a simulation of the platform FlowBank, which is the main sponsor of the event. The Main Prize is a Rolex, yes you read that right. And if you are not first, other cool prizes await you too.

IS THE TRADING GAME WORTH MY TIME?

Well, let’s separate the potential candidates in two different groups: the ones that invest in the financial markets and know how to handle a portfolio and trade stocks, and the ones who don’t. It is undeniable that in our modern days, it is important for any household, to hold liquidity and assets elsewhere than under the bed. It is why financial experts and economists will tell you that it is critical to diversify your investments, between commodities, stocks, real estate, crypto… Let’s say you have $10’000 that you entrust to a random investment fund in 2022, they will probably do it this way: $2’500 in blue chip stocks, $4’000 in ETFs, $1’500 in a real estate fund, $1’500 in cryptocurrencies and $500 in NFTs. You can agree or disagree with this setup and that is why another investment fund will surely have a completely different strategy.

Why bother arguing? The obvious solution to settle this argument is to manage a portfolio that would be 100% made by yourself. It is a “win-win” situation since if you literally lose all your money, then you would have learnt that the strategy you used MUST NOT be adopted in real life trading. And if you increase your capital better than your competitors, then you would earn yourself a gorgeous prize, aside from the experience you gained.

THE GROWTH OF E-BANKING AND THE IMPORTANCE OF CRYPTO IN THE FG

Starting this year, the trading game will not only be available on your pc, but also on your smartphone. Checking on your investments will be just like using binance or swissborg, meaning you can do that on the bus in the morning, before you go to sleep or after a party. But more seriously, e-banking is more and more popular these days and that is for a reason. A Statista study showed that, out of the 68% of Indians that own a smartphone, 47% do digital payments daily and 46% have a mobile app for their bank. E-commerce grew 14.2% last year in the US and one of the few things that helped businesses and SMEs stay alive during the lockdown was online transactions.

All in all, as I said in my previous article on cryptocurrencies and shitcoins, the popularization of trading made thanks to memes on social networks got a good portion of the population to be interested in trading because some markets showed us that you didn’t have to be a financial genius to produce phenomenal returns. Then, these people attracted even more people because first it is easy to access (apps on your smartphone) and second, the only thing that attracts an investor is the money. Plus, the people that make these kinds of comments are generally notorious/influential people, the richest man on earth Elon Musk for instance. So, the tweets of people like this reach a big portion of people that create a community among themselves.

It is in fact very innovative and instructive that cryptocurrencies are traded in the Trading Game. They are valuable assets that could change the standings of the contest, just like they changed billions of people’s lives. The fact that today, a casual student or even an unemployed person can outperform a financial expert, thanks to their flair or thanks to a lot of luck, is the only proof you need that if you want to make a small fortune out of passive income, you must take the leap and get into this business that is expanding and diversifying every day.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TRADING GAME FOR HEC LAUSANNE

Gathering 1’200 participants, the Trading Game is one of the biggest simulation games in Europe, at the university level. People from all Switzerland will be coming, so HEC Lausanne needs to be well represented. In no small way, an event like this one can change your career path, or at least narrow it to something you want or don’t want to do in the future.

ACTUALITY & POTENTIAL STRATEGIES TO ADAPT

This paragraph is for everyone that may not know how to attack the trading game. As we said earlier, every trader is free to adapt a strategy of his own. And the beauty of this domain is that you really don’t know what is going to happen. For a fact, this period is as good a period as any to understand the market’s fluctuations. The Russia-Ukraine conflict, just like the covid crisis, caused changes in the markets that most of the people were not expecting. And when we say crisis, we say sales and opportunities. For example, the banks that were so “green” two weeks earlier will now advice you to buy oil. In fact, Russia is the main gas supplier globally and since the invasion, the price of gas has incredibly gone up, same goes for the black gold. So, considering my silver rule, “thou shall diversify your portfolio”, you can start the first days by investing in commodities, European and American. Most of the ETFs performed negatively the last month so maybe now is a time to shine back, but don’t allocate a very big part of your resources in ETFs since the game only lasts a month. Also, you will have to buy some stocks, including blue chips and risky potential gainers. Finally, a diversified portfolio needs to have some crypto tokens in it. You should buy small amounts of volatile underdog coins, if your approach will be a less risky one. If you are planning on a risky approach, then crypto shitcoins are, I believe, the holdings that can give you the fastest results. Of course, BTC, ETH, ADA & co. should not be ignored as they are all potential gainers next month, while being less volatile than the other cryptocurrencies. As mentioned in the beginning, there will be weekly challenges where the leading performance will be rewarded, so you should try and take bigger risks in the beginning of the week, and much less risk if you are on a positive run at the end of the week.

Finally, I hope that the people who are still not interested in investing in the financial markets will start to change their vision about this. It is undoubtedly a great way of having a passive income, at any level of education. As long as you have access to a smartphone/pc, internet connection every day and a very small portion of capital that you are ready to lose, you should be doing this. Having this kind of income will only help you, as you would have the chance of doing so many things, like for example going on vacation with money that you didn’t “sweat” to get, or make your retirement easier. Jordan the wolf Belfort said that:

“Money cannot buy happiness, but poverty cannot buy anything”.