TEHRAN – For the very first time, 10 teams from prestigious universities of Tehran have partaken in a month-long stock exchange and trade competition.

Organized by and held at Tehran’s Securities and Exchange Organization, the event started on July 24, hosting students from the universities of Tehran, Sharif, Allameh Tabataba’i, Kharazmi, Khajeh Nasir, Al Zahra, Amir Kabir, Beheshti, Tarbiat Modarres and Azad.

Each team contains of four members, three college students and a supervisor who can be a professor leading the group and directing them to better investments in four areas.

The competition aims at teaching the newbies the science of trade and stock exchange while developing the culture of entrepreneurship and job creation.  

Each team is given a 100-million-rial (about $2,600) credit for stock portfolio formation and equity trading in four industries in stock market and trading. The investment is done online and for the convenience of the participating teams, on even days the group members operate from elsewhere, should they wish, and on even days at least two members have to be at the location.

Every day, the position of each group is announced, a place that can be taken over by other groups throughout the remaining days of the competition.  

The poorest performance group, University of Amir Kabir reasoned their group failure and blamed “poor analysis, high stress and lack of experience” as their setback.

“Although we have a very poor record as of now, we are hoping competition to move up on the scale by the end of the competition,” said Sanam Khoshhal, an MBA student of Amir Kabir University.

Another team that was able to pull off miracle, to say the least, was Sharif University of Technology team. In just 24 hours, literally, they move up from 9th to 4th place.

Mostafa Kannani, 24, with just a semester away from his MBA degree, blamed “hastiness, indecisiveness and not knowing his teammates for being almost at the bottom of the list but was grateful to their support team, working behind the scene and helping them make the right decisions through the use of algorithm, to pull through.

Leaving the competition on a positive note, Kannani said his takeaway from the competition is better team work, and eventually a network creation.

So far Allameh Tabataba'i University has been holding the first place, Kharazmi University is the runner-up followed by Shahid Beheshti University in the third place, but the ranking can change during the competition as it still has another 15 days to go.

Top three winners will be awarded 100 million rials, 50 million rials and 30 million rials respectively.

‘League of Stock Market Stars’ will wrap up on August 23.