Members of the Mice in Suits team are, from left, Michelle Xuan, Helen Xu, Ella Guo and Darby Miller. (Photo by Michelle Xuan)
Samantha Kupiaiinen
Each year, the University of Pennsylvania hosts the Wharton Global Youth Investment Competition, an annual event that gives high school students from around the world the opportunity to learn about strategy, teamwork, risk, and more.
This year, two Carmel High School junior teams ranked in the top 50: Mice in Suits and Unreal Investments. Both teams made it to the semifinals but did not make it to the finals.
Mice in Suits is an all-female team consisting of Michelle Xuan, Darby Miller, Helen Xu and Ella Guo. Unreal Investments team members include Siddarth Chavali, Richard Geng, Evan Witter, William Spence, Jason John and Yizhong/Rocky Li.
During the competition, both teams will be mentored by a teacher who will be their competition advisor, and will have access to an online stock market simulator. The advisor for Mice in Suits and Unreal Investments is former business owner and chemistry teacher Scott Seymour.
“This isn’t a regular stock market race where you just invest and hope to make money,” says Chavari, who is part of Unreal Investments. “This is a case study. You’re taking on the role of an investment team. You have a client, you analyze her values, her goals, and you have to create a portfolio that aligns with her interests and meets her goals.”
From there, the teams wrote a midterm report, then a final report. After the midterm test, only 1,600 teams remained. From there, the top 50 teams advanced to the semi-finals. Of those, only 25 teams were from the United States. Everyone was notified via email.
“When I opened the email, I started jumping up and down in my house, and when I showed them our team group chat, we were so excited we were spamming random words,” said Xuan, a member of Mice in Suits.
For many students, their desire to participate in the competition stems from an interest in finance and business, while for others, they participate out of a desire to learn more about the subject.
“We wanted to participate in this competition to further expand our knowledge of business,” said Shuang. “Many of us are already involved in business activities such as DECA, and we saw this competition as an opportunity to delve deeper into the topic of stocks and investing.”
Prior knowledge and interest in the stock market was a key factor in helping both teams get this far in the competition.
“We were already interested in the stock market; we all took AP Macro,” Chavari said, “and for this event specifically, we met every week to talk about how we wanted to progress in the competition.”
For Mice in Suits, the approach was a little different.
“Our team name, ‘Mice in Suits,’ not only represents part of our strategy, but also sets us apart with a memorable theme,” says Shuang. “We brought creativity into the theme and design by thoroughly exploring the idea of mice wearing suits throughout our reports and presentations. I spent a lot of time drawing graphics of mice, cheese and bow ties, and my group also came up with a lot of puns to incorporate into our work. So we really tried to set our team apart with the overall mouse brand, while still focusing on the strategy and financial aspects of the competition.”
