FOUR students from Tadcaster Grammar School have won a trip to New York after demonstrating shrewd trading to win a national investment competition.

The Tadcaster team, ‘Benoit’s Barmy Army’, consisting of Year 13 students Harry Bean, 17, James Bradshaw, 18, James Tucker, 17, and Alex Robinson, 18, have triumphed in this year’s annual Student Investor Challenge.

They beat more than 8,000 teams of four from schools around the UK and significantly outperforming the market in the process.

The competition is run by financial education body The London Institute of Banking & Finance and seeks to encourage students to learn about the economy and how the stock market works.

More than 33,500 students from schools around the UK took part, despite having little or no prior experience of the stock market or the finance sector.

To reach the final, Benoit’s Barmy Army had to invest two virtual portfolios of £100,000 over a four month period in a virtual trading game which replicated the real market, competing against teams from around the UK.

They returned an incredible £119,734 in their Active Investor portfolio (a profit of 19.7 per cent), getting into the top 500 teams who moved to the next stage.

In the semi-final they had to successfully predict the rise and fall in the value of certain asset classes to make it to the final eight.

In the final the team had to compete in three live trading simulations and deliver a presentation giving investment advice for a personal case study. Their presentation included advice on investing in a range of financial assets and commodities to demonstrate how their knowledge of investing could be applied to individuals based on their particular investment objectives, circumstances and attitudes to risk.

They came first, winning an all expenses paid trip to New York where they will visit the New York Stock exchange, Wall Street and other world renowned sites.

Mr Craig Benoit, head of economics and commercial subjects at Tadcaster Grammar School, said: “I have been immensely impressed by the team’s work ethic whilst faced with the very real examination pressures of an upper sixth student. The team’s very real interest in economics beyond what is taught in the classroom certainly shone through in both the heats and the final. They managed to decipher complex information and present it in an informative way. The level of research and analysis they demonstrated was really superb.”