Every week, millions of Brits suffer for their team in online Premier League fantasy football games.
We spend hours thinking about whether to name Erling Haaland, Mohamed Salah or Antoine Semenyo as captain and deciding which new players to transfer to gain an advantage over their friends or colleagues.
Now a new virtual trading platform hopes to tap into our competitive spirit, pitting traders against each other and offering cash prizes in a bid to teach the British public how to invest.
ShareQuest gives users £100,000 in virtual money to build a portfolio of shares and then they compete against other users for the highest returns over a week, a month or a whole year.
The platform allows users to win cash prizes if they perform well, but it also allows them to learn basic investing principles and gain confidence without having to risk their own money.
Competitions are held annually, monthly and weekly, with entry fees of £50 for annual competitions, £5 per month or £1 per week.
The beautiful game: Millions of Premier League fans play fantasy football – and ShareQuest hopes to replicate this with virtual investing
Half of the entry fee goes directly towards the prize pool, says ShareQuest – so if the annual competition had 1,000 subscribers, the total winnings would be £25,000 on offer.
ShareQuest said it would introduce closed user groups, allowing investment clubs and workplaces to compete against each other.
The stakes, Sharequest says, are low enough that anyone can play, but high enough that people care about winning.
Martin Dobson, chief executive of ShareQuest, told This is Money: “There are three factors that influence first-time investors: fear of losing money, fear of missing out and greed.
‘When you start investing, you’re not sure what you’re doing and the risk of losing money can be high. Then you hear about people making money and you’re tempted to do the same, but you usually miss the boat.
“New investors also want to make big profits rather than learning the basics of investing.”
Dobson, who previously held roles at Natwest, Westhouse Securities and Hobart Capital Markets, added: ‘ShareQuest is a way of getting people into the share market without actually realizing they are getting involved.
“The genius of Fantasy Premier League isn’t that it teaches you football – you already know football, but it makes you care about players you would never normally watch. Suddenly you check on the Nottingham Forest left-back because he’s in your team.’
Dobson said the same thing applies to the stock market. Building a virtual portfolio, he said, means users are interested in the companies they own and can analyze fundamentals, price movements and the broader market.
He said: ‘When you have BP in your virtual portfolio, you start paying attention to oil prices. When Tesco loses its league position, you find yourself reading about supermarket margins.
‘This learning occurs almost by accident – driven by competition, not obligation.’
Competition: ShareQuest allows users to battle and win cash prizes
ShareQuest offers access to a wealth of company data, from earnings and share prices to analytics and valuation metrics, for all companies listed on the London Primary Market and the AIM Market.
It also has a community forum where users can discuss investment ideas and ask questions about the stocks they invest in, as well as its own ‘ShareQuest Index’, which tracks the best-performing stocks evaluated based on various fundamentals and indicators such as price-to-earnings and Sharpe ratio.
The platform instills the importance of diversification, with individual shareholdings limited to 10% of the total portfolio for monthly and annual competitions, and up to 20% for weekly competitions.
Currently, users can only access London-listed shares, but Dobson said the focus on the UK market was deliberate.
“I want this to be very UK-centric because there is an incentive for investors to look at the UK,” he said.
“British shares are currently trading at a historic discount to US shares. The London Stock Exchange offers dividend yields that American indices can only dream of, with household names such as Legal & General, British American Tobacco and National Grid offering yields in excess of five percent.’
The launch of the platform comes amid a government effort to promote retail investing among savers, in a bid to create an investment culture in the UK and boost the UK stock market.
This includes cutting Jesus Money grant to £12,000 from the current £20,000 for under-65s.
Dobson said: ‘At the time it was new AND When regulations take effect, market participants will spend months – perhaps years – learning how the stock market works, what companies they know about and what kind of investors they want to be.
‘They will approach them first shares and shares Yes not with fear, but with confidence.’
The latest figures from Columbia Threadneedle Investments show that the British public finds investing more confusing than ever, with around 61 per cent finding it difficult to understand, compared to 44 per cent ten years ago.
This is despite the increasing availability and popularity of digital and app-based investment providers in recent years.
The platform launched on December 8th and the annual ShareQuest began on January 1st.
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