Congratulations to the NGI Competition 2021 Winners!

The 2021 Next Generation Investors Competition has ended and we are proud to announce the amazing winners and finalists:

First Place - Javier Labarta

Total Returns: $39,421.51

Investing Strategy Description:

Throughout NGI I mainly participated in shorts, because as the competition began I did a market analysis and came to the conclusion that while the US had a high GDP, the unemployment rate was too high because only the efficient workers were staying. Only 1/3rd of workers planed to return to their jobs after being laid off, corporations “weeding” out people who don’t like their jobs, and 95% of workers were considering changing jobs. As well,the infrastructure plan was a soft plan that includes harder tasks, more social spending, child care spending, and housing reforms. To add on the Fed had recently announced that short term inflation was higher than expected, but still low in the long term. In June, the 5 year bond yields skyrocketed, 10 year bond yields pushed up and sold off, and the 30 year bond yields plummeted. Due to this I did not see a reason to take long positions in stocks except recovery stocks. Sadly, recovery stocks do not give back that good of a return. Therefore I focused more on technical analysis. I mainly used a combination of price action, vwap, and sprinkle of fibonacci. I first looked at gappers and then found a pattern through VWAP bounces. If there was no pattern with VWAP then I would use fibonacci retracement and wait for a golden ratio R/S line. I would use this in combination with level 2 data to find where and how much people are buying. I would then wait for confirmation through time and sales and secured my position. This process led me to 38% with about 87% accuracy.

Second Place - Juan Alonso

Total Returns: $24,854.63

Investing Strategy Description:

I have been into stocks for the past couple of years but have never had the opportunity to make real money from it as custodial accounts are very hard to get. This competition almost felt like the final test I needed to gain my confidence to finally start trading. When the competition started I kept on trying to find patterns through gappers but I was not really able to. So I decided to take a couple decisions, I put limit orders in AMD, ARKG, BNGO, TKAT, DBGI and MRIN. I had understood that limit orders would fill themselves but for some reason none of the orders filled. From So when I logged on to the account 9/10/21 I was surprised to see my account at 0%. I had decided on AMD due to the chip shortage, ARKG and BNGO due to the genomics revolution, and TKAT, DBGI, and MRIN due to NFT sympathy plays. All these plays were fundamentally sound. Between July 1st and September I learned everything I could about technical analysis so when I saw I was at 0% I was ready to do short term technical plays. Through different multi cap trades I was able to attain 24%. The stock market is one based on patterns so I was able to be successful the majority of time. Finished second place.

Third Place - Rico Qi

Total Returns: $14,231.00

Investing Strategy Description:

My strategy includes searching across a lot of stocks, instead of sticking to a few popular ones. For each stock, I identify its short-term trend, that is, whether they are likely to rise or fall in 1 week. If I have a clear idea, I would identify my reasoning behind it. Then, I identify its long-term trend, which is the same as the short-term trend but for a few months. I only buy or short a stock if 1. I have a solid reason behind my prediction of whether it will rise or fall in both short and long term, 2. If the stock's short term trend agrees with its long term trend, and 3. If the stock's past data has been "reasonable", that is, if one can tell its trend at one point just by looking at the data prior and if it is unlikely to be affected by world events. Those are strict constraints, but if you look at a lot of stocks, there will be a few that satisfies.

Fourth Place - Zuzanna Marciniak

Total Returns: $3,201.41

Investing Strategy Description:

Over the three months of my participation in the Next Generation Investors competition, I have used multiple investing strategies. I did not approach the competition with a fixed plan on the investments I was going to make- instead, I mixed and matched different strategies throughout the whole game period, learning new strategies as the game went on.

Initially, I based my decisions on my instincts- I would buy the stocks that I thought were going to do well. Only later on did I find out that this strategy is called growth investing. After doing some more research on the topic, I decided to invest in AirBnB’s stocks, since I realised it has a potential for growth for the duration of the competition (my reasoning was that people would start travelling in the summer, especially with vaccination rates growing and covid cases declining).

Later on, I also took upon a new strategy in investing in IPOs. I found it a promising, although potentially risky, way to invest in the short term. This strategy turned out to be pretty successful for me, since I gained a lot of money on the Candel Therapeutics’s stock since investing in it right after the stock went public.

Overall, participating in the NGI Investing competition was a very valuable experience for me. I learned to not only rely on my instincts when investing, but to do actual research and make well-thought decisions. I am sure that this experience will be useful for me later on, in real life investing.

Fifth Place - Julia Wojacka

Total Returns: $1,887.87

Investing Strategy Description:

My investing strategy consisted of researching companies, and finding out their short-term plans (as the competition only lasted 3 months) to see how likely the value of their socks were to rise. I also subscribed to this newsletter which updated me daily on news within the investing world, which allowed me to instantly invest in companies when there stocks were bound to rise. I also invested largely in mutual funds such as Vanguard which would slowly but surely make me money.