Team www.Sahamas.net finished 2nd in BursaPursuit

Many congratulations to team Sahamas (www.Sahamas.net ) who finished 2nd in the first ever Bursa Pursuit investment challenge.

Team members:

1. TheChargingBull
2. JLMouse
3. Random
4. Faruq
5. LEEYA2004

* ps. due to some technical hitches, the team finished second. In my opinion, they should have finished first!!!

Well done guys!

Here's their proud trophy!

The Star Biz had a write-up: Bursa’s online game ends with a bang

• Monday December 17, 2007
  
  
  Bursa’s online game ends with a bang
  
  By Fintan Ng
  
  BURSA Pursuit, the online investment challenge game organised by Bursa Malaysia Bhd, ended on a festive note recently at a prize-giving night entertained by local artistes.
  
  Contestants, their family members and friends attended it, which was held at a leading hotel's artificial beach.
  
  The game, which attracted over 55,000 virtual investors, ran from Oct 1 to Nov 30 and was divided into three leagues - main, sub and pro with a young investors category added due to the overwhelming response from younger contestants, of which 72% were below 30 and 62% had not traded before.
  
  Each individual or team was given a virtual capital of RM250,000.
  
  Bursa Malaysia worked with four broking partners, Hong Leong e-broking, RHB Invest, OSK 1888 and CIMB i-trade, to develop the game, which was based on real market conditions of the game period.
  
  The game's aim was to attract and educate a younger set of retail investors, especially those in the 20 to 29 age bracket.
  
  Prizes were given to each of the three leagues as well as to the top 10 male and female investors grouped by age in the young investors category.
  
  Prizes worth up to RM560,000 were given away in the form of trading limits and cash.
  
  The first, second and third prize winners of the three leagues were each given RM100,000, RM30,000 and RM20,000 in trading limit where they would designate a broker to manage their funds.
  
  Those in the young investors category were each given RM1,000 cash.
  
  Bursa Malaysia equities marketing head Azalina Adham said told StarBiz on the sidelines of the event that the exchange organised the game because it wanted to grow the retail market, which was hard hit by the Asian financial crisis 10 years ago and suffered from a dearth of younger investors.
  
  “Most of the retail investors and dealers today are older, certainly above 35, so when we first came up with the idea of an investment game, we were apprehensive because we were not sure if the targeted group would be interested,” she said.
  
  She added that Bursa Malaysia's chief executive officer Datuk Yusli Mohamed Yusoff was pleasantly surprised that there was such an overwhelming response.
  
  “We know it takes time but this is the first step, we decided that in order to get younger people interested we had to interact with them via channels they were comfortable with such as the internet and through the hitz.fm Hitz Cruisers,” Azalina said, adding that there were a few hiccups at the start due to bandwidth access since there were many people who entered the game.
  
  She said market information as well as the trading was done via the electronic trading platform and several trading tools were made available to the contestants in order that they would be able to get the information for their trading.
  
  “The other objective was to make them comfortable in the equities market environment through educating them about what various corporate movements were,” Azalina added.
  
  “The exchange does not want people to go in blindly, what we want is for people who hear about any market movements or tips to go find out through the trading tools.”
  
  The trading tools available during the game period were NextView, Bursa Station and Integra Stock.
  
  “In all likelihood there would probably be another game next year,” Azalina said.
  
  Meanwhile, in the main league's individual investor category, first prize winner Chong Chen Keng, who attended the prize-giving ceremony with partner Edmund Ngui, was still in a state of euphoria.
  
  “I came to know of the game through friends from OSK Investment Bank's Seremban branch,” she said.
  
  “I am new to trading and seldom checked the business pages of newspapers or even go online for business and economic news until now.
  
  “The trading tools and tips really helped me, I caught up really fast and build up a strategic portfolio,” she added.
  
  For Ching Hong Tat, who led the team “Glorious Winners” consisting of family members, the game was an opportunity to educate the younger family members of the team on how to make their investment decisions and how to grow their wealth wisely.
  
  The team took the top prize in the sub league for non-professionals.
  
  Because the game was based on the real market, Ching felt that it was a good way to learn.
  
  “The underlying principle is that you have to know what you are investing in, understand your stocks before you invest in them,” he said.