With my virtual money firmly on Trevor “I’ve been in the markets for 30 years” Carr to bring home the “luxury” prize from 7city’s simulation trading competition for journalists, I sat beside him at our virtual trading desk chomping on a free sarnie, confident the glory would be ours.
“There are a couple of guys here from the Economist,” said Trevor.
“Have you met them before?” I said.
“No, it says where they’re from on their name badges.”
“Oh yeah…”
It was at this point that Trevor decided I might be more of a hindrance than a help at the desk, so he left me to stare blankly at the screen while he got down to the business of making money.
We had one million virtual euros to play with on the virtual equities market, complete with virtual market events and news.
I’d like to report that Trevor, having spent the majority of his working life as a trader, would have the edge over the other journalists but I would be lying.
As the results were projected up on the leader board after the first 10 minutes of play, it started to dawn on me that we probably wouldn’t win after all. We were in eighth place at this point with losses of 20 grand. Reuters, the Economist and Futures and Options World were at the top with profits of 60 grand.
“Well obviously they’re just limiting up on the names they like the most rather than doing it properly,” said Trevor, churlishly.
Play continued and we were hit with the virtual news that Deutsche Bank was in talks to take over BNP Paribas, Siemens’ phones were crap and ECB interest rates were predicted to go up 50 basis points.
We sold Deutsche and bought BNP Paribas, but it didn’t go the way it should have and we got screwed over by Citi’s Siemens prices. It was about now that we thought ‘sod it’ and went out on a bit of punt like everyone else. We did correctly predict that interest rates would go up 100 basis points rather than 50 though.
One of the instructors from 7city came over to Trevor to give him some advice for what spread he should quote to HSBC: “If you make it wider on both sides you might be able to squeeze some extra profit out of him.” Naturally, Trevor ignored him, muttering something that sounded like “never traded a day in his life…” but I couldn’t be sure.
After 40 minutes of simulated trading, the results were in. Reuters came last with staggering losses of 150 grand and three groups of PRs came in seventh, sixth and fifth. We came in fourth with a profit of 80 grand but, much to our dismay, the two FOW groups beat us to second and third, with the smug journalists from the Economist coming first with profits of 200 grand.
As Trevor unsportingly pointed out, “It’s obviously better to be lucky than good.”
