Top B schools around the world eye ISB's virtual stock trading competition

Top global B-schools like INSEAD, University of California Los Angeles and National University of Singapore are eyeing one of India's most prestigious college ISB's virtual stock trading competition.

The college in partnership with a startup called Trakinvest has launched the competition titled ‘Beat the Street’. Trackinvest is a start-up run by Bhatia, who was a principal at JP Morgan Partners in Hong Kong and headed Principal Investments at AIG Financial Products.

“A trading competition like this enables students to apply investment concepts learnt in the classroom in a setting as close to the real world as possible. We at NSE-ISB Trading Lab hope this event will produce great traders and investors in the long run,” Prasanna Tantri, senior associate director at the Center for Analytical Finance at ISB, told the LiveMint.

The participating teams will be using Trakinvest’s virtual trading platform. Each team will be given initial virtual currency worth $100,000. They will have the option of trading in 10 stock markets, including the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, the London Stock Exchange, three Chinese stock exchanges and the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd (NSE), among others.

Winners of the competition will win prizes worth $2,000. They will be chosen based on the percentage change in their portfolio’s net worth from the start of the game. Results will be announced tomorrow.

“Every student involved in Beat the Street is learning about stock trading in a whole new visual and social way, setting them up strongly for their future careers,” said Trakinvest’s CEO and founder Bobby Bhatia.