Philippa Nolan takes out the ASX Schools Sharemarket Game 2.

Winners of the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) Sharemarket Game 2 for secondary students have been decided, with Philippa Nolan becoming the first female national winner since 2003.

ASX conducts the Sharemarket Game twice a year to provide students with the chance to get first-hand experience of investing in the sharemarket. Each syndicate is given a hypothetical $50,000 to invest and the winner is the syndicate that grows its investment by the most over the period of the game. Game 2 ended on 30 October.

Female students performed strongly, taking out the top spots in New South Wales/ACT, Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria.

Philippa Nolan from PLC Sydney was the national winner of Game 2. She held a diversified portfolio of health care, consumer discretionary, financials, consumer staples and industrial stocks. Philippa also regularly read newspapers to keep up to date on the activities of the companies she had invested in.

“I chose some stocks because I was familiar with what the companies did such as Bega and Cochlear. I tried to diversify across a variety of industry sectors including health, banking, leisure and food. I originally invested in a mining stock but I sold out of that because I was concerned that it might be too volatile,” Philippa said.

Craig Trigwell-Lindley from Dural High in New South Wales was runner-up in the national Game. Craig focussed his efforts on investing in companies outside the blue chip and resource sectors.

“After extensive research, I decided it best to purchase shares with a lower holding value so as to maximise my percentage return on my portfolio. I kept up to date on market movements by reading media articles and press releases,” said Craig.

Tony Hunter, ASX Head of Investor Education said: “For more than 30 years, the ASX Schools Sharemarket Game has given participants practical, real-world experience investing in the market. It was fantastic to see female students in the top rankings, though all our national winners did exceptionally well to build profitable portfolios.”

The ASX Schools Sharemarket Game, sponsored by Citi, is conducted twice yearly and is available to students in Australian secondary schools. More than 1,000 teachers registered and 32,000 students played Game 2.

Over the Game period, the market was positive which is reflected in the numbers below:

• the All Ordinaries (XAO) was up 7%
• all sectors ended in positive territory, the best performing sector was financials up 9.26% and the least was materials up 3.06%
• the top stock was Bega Cheese up 50.34% – all of the National and State first place winners chose Bega Cheese for their portfolios
• 67.26% of players finished in profit
• the average portfolio value was $50,712.

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