The Wharton Investment Competition was hosted on Dec. 12. The competition is an experimental investment challenge in which teams of four to six students team up with a teacher on an online stock market simulator. The top 50 teams were announced on Jan. 27.
Faculty advisor of two teams for this year’s competition and Independent Research Teacher Rob Levin said the goal for this year’s competition was to develop a concrete plan and invest money in a scenario.
“This Investment Competition challenges teams to take on a real-world-based case and develop an investment plan to propose to the case’s client,” Levin said. “This year, the client was Connor Barwin, a Wharton and NFL alumnus. His goal was to invest money for ongoing community recreation programs and long-term facilities construction.”
Levin said he helped teams as little as possible, but when he did, he tried to only offer advice to ensure students were doing most of the work and learning from the process.
“I provided as much or as little guidance as students wished,” Levin said. “When I did help, I served as a loyal skeptic, questioning and testing strategy. I also taught opportunistically, introducing key team processes, business practice and investment principle ideas when the moment was right.”
Noah Shallman ’27 said he wanted to join the competition because it allowed him to experiment with his ideas in a situation similar to reality.
“I was motivated to participate in the Wharton Competition because it gave me the opportunity to try and test some of the theoretical ideas I’ve had about financial markets in a fun and risk-averse space,” Shallman said. “I was also interested in it because it allowed me to work with some of my close friends on something that we are all passionate about.”
Chloe Min ’27 said she heard about the competition from upperclassmen and decided to participate as it was an opportunity to explore a new discipline of her interest.
“I heard about the competition from older friends who were able to advance in it,” Min said. “I wanted to see if investing was something I’d be interested in for the future, even though I really didn’t think I would, I figured it wouldn’t do any harm.”
Shallman said the most meaningful part of the process was the collaboration and leadership positions he took on while preparing for the contest.
“The most rewarding part of the competition was the team meetings we had during the trading period,” Shallman said. “I was the leader of our team for the competition, where I formulated the idea for our strategy and programmed our model. I was also in charge of scheduling our meetings.”
Min said she helped assure that the clients’ wants were the focus of the portfolio.
“My role in this competition was to be a mediator,” Min said. “I really looked in on the case study and made sure the clients’ needs were being met and our portfolio aligned with their personal morals and priorities.”
Levin said he enjoys advising student teams every year for this competition and seeing the students cooperate while growing individually.
“Last year, I was also gratified to have advised a team which earned a semi-finalist position which means they were in the top 50 teams out of 5,000,” Levin said. “[I enjoy] watching talented, opinionated and assertive individuals invest the hard work and flexibility necessary to work well together as a team.”
