By Samantha Kupiainen
Each year, the University of Pennsylvania hosts the Wharton Global Youth Investment Competition, an annual event that provides an opportunity for high school students from around the world to learn about strategy, teamwork, risk and more.
This year, two teams of juniors from Carmel High School placed in the top 50: Mice in Suits and Unreal Investments. Both teams advanced to the semifinals but did not move on to the finals.
Mice in Suits is an all-female team comprised of Michelle Xuan, Darby Miller, Helen Xu and Ella Guo. Unreal Investments team members include Siddarth Chavali, Richard Geng, Evan Witter, William Spence, Jason John and Yizhong/Rocky Li.
Throughout the competition, both teams are guided by a teacher as their advisor for the competition and have access to an online stock market simulator. Mice in Suits and Unreal Investments are advised by Scott Seymour, a chemistry teacher who was previously a business owner.
“It’s not a normal stock market competition where you just invest and try to make money,” said Chavali, a member of Unreal Investments. “It’s a case study. So, you’re taking the role of an investment team. You have a client, and you have to analyze her values, her goals and you kind of cater a portfolio to whatever she’s interested in that meets her goals.”
From there, the teams wrote a midterm report and then a final report. After the midterm, there were only 1,600 teams left. From there, the top 50 advanced to the semifinals. Of those, only 25 teams were from the U.S. All were notified by email.
“When I opened the email, I actually started jumping around in my house, and when I showed our team’s group chat, we were all spamming random words because we were so thrilled,” said Xuan, a member of Mice in Suits
For many students, their desire to join the competition stems from their interest in finance and business. For others, they were eager to learn more about the subject.
“We wanted to join the competition to further expand our knowledge in business,” Xuan said. “Many of us have already been involved in business activities such as DECA, and we saw this competition as an opportunity to delve deeper into the topic of stocks and investing.”
Having prior knowledge of or interest in the stock market was a key component for both teams to advance so far in the competition.
“We were already interested in the stock market. We all took AP Macro,” Chavali said. “For this event specifically, we’d meet up every week and discuss how we want to move along in the competition.”
For Mice in Suits, the approach was slightly different.
“Our team name Mice in Suits not only shows some of our strategy, but also sets us apart with a memorable theme,” Xuan said. “Throughout our reports and presentations, we incorporated creativity into our theme and design by going all out with our idea of mice wearing suits. I spent a lot of time drawing graphics of mice, cheese, and bowties, and my group also came up with a lot of puns to incorporate in our work. So, we really tried to distinguish our team with this whole branding of mice, while still focusing on the strategy and financial aspects of the competition.”
