National competition
Wharton Global High School Investment Competition
Manage a portfolio for a client, then defend the strategy to Wharton judges.
Wharton
The format, at a glance
- Team
- A student team, with the advisor it registers with Wharton
- Account
- A simulated $100,000 portfolio
- Client
- Assigned, with stated goals and constraints
- Judged on
- Strategy fit, research quality, and the written report, not raw return
- Outside help
- Prohibited: no paid advisors, consultants, agents, or outside courses
- Season
- Registration and trading in the fall, finals in the spring
Portfolio · Research · Global
What it is
The Wharton Global High School Investment Competition puts your team in the seat of an investment advisor. You get a simulated $100,000 account and a client with actual goals and constraints, and you manage the portfolio as a team across a fixed trading period.
Teams are judged on more than their return: on how well the strategy fits the client they were given, the research behind what they bought, and a written report and presentation.
Top teams advance out of regional rounds to the Global Finale, judged at Wharton.
Read before you enter
Wharton's rule on outside help
Every team affirms this when it registers. Paid advisors, education consultants, and other agents are prohibited. No participant or team may sign up for any non-Wharton, extracurricular course, online or in person, that claims to teach the Investment Competition. A team the Wharton Global Youth Program suspects of using paid advisors, education consultants, extracurricular coursework, or other agents is disqualified.
MCBA takes that at face value. Nobody at MCBA coaches a Wharton team, reads its report or deck, or advises on its holdings, and MCBA runs no course on the competition. What members get is general investing education, the same whether or not they ever enter, and the person who guides a team is the advisor it registered with Wharton.
What MCBA does, and does not do
Investing education, open to every member and built around no competition in particular. It is the same library whether you enter Wharton or never do, which is the point.
The investing topics
Stocks, stock valuation, fundamental analysis, financial statements, earnings and margins, moats and industry structure, diversification, portfolio theory, funds, and bonds, each with a study guide, flashcards, and a formula sheet. The vocabulary of any serious portfolio, learned as a subject.
The Portfolio Simulator
Place orders, hold positions, and watch fills and profit and loss move against real market history. It is MCBA's own exercise with MCBA's own scoring: a place to learn how a portfolio behaves, not a rehearsal of anyone's competition.
The Data Center
Reading filings, charts, and datasets like an analyst, the habit behind any holding you can explain. What you go on to research, and for whom, is yours.
What MCBA stays out of
Your Wharton report, deck, holdings, and strategy. MCBA does not review them, rehearse them, or advise on them, and no member is paid or asked to advise a team. Practice the pitch with your teammates and your registered advisor, which is what Wharton's rules leave room for.
Where it sits in the season
Registration and the trading period run in the fall, with finals in the spring.
Teams register for the Wharton Global High School Investment Competition and start managing their simulated portfolio online.
National Economics Challenge finals, National Personal Finance Challenge nationals, and the Wharton Global Finale, the season's biggest stages.
Each bar is a milestone's typical window across a school year, August to July. They are windows, not dates: exact dates are confirmed with chapters.
Investing education starts the day you join
Members get the investing topics, the Portfolio Simulator, and the Data Center, plus a chapter to learn alongside. A Wharton team brings its own advisor, as the rules require.