Global Investor

Finance Lab Professional’s experiential approach to investing delivers authentic, collaborative learning and is a valuable resource for Business Schools.

With the ability to control the market to match your teaching objectives at its core, the dual-screen simulation captures the unique dynamics of financial markets trading.

The combination of risk-taking, strategic thinking, competition and time-pressure delivers an engaging and challenging educational and skills development experience.

The simulation supports teaching in Finance-related courses and modules, and enrichment and outreach activities.

Investors trade in multi-national companies on a global equity market, responding to breaking news and fast-changing price and market data.

The simulation facilitates technical analysis by offering players the option to place buy and sell limit orders. This order data is made available to all investors, facilitating price discovery and enabling investors to assess the potential demand in the market.

The option to short sell enhances the realism of the investing experience, allowing traders to act in advance on negative news and to hedge the downside risk of a long position.

A unique combination of stories is generated for each game from an extensive news database.  Prices are affected by these news stories and by the volume of trades made by investors.  This variability of both price data and news content ensures that the simulation can be repeated with different outcomes.

Finance Lab Professional supports academic, enrichment and outreach work:

• Finance modules: investments, portfolio construction and management, trading strategies
• personal development: team building, critical thinking, problem solving
• analysing and interpreting financial and business news
• international collaborations and language learning (the simulation is in English and Spanish)
• student investment societies

Our Investus experiential learning workshop simulates the challenge of managing a fund on behalf of a client.

Working in teams of Investment and Media Analysts, students take on the role of fund managers trading on a global equity market, developing and adapting trading strategies in response to business news, company information and market data. 

In the second part of the workshop the teams design and deliver a digital or poster presentation to their client on the performance of their fund and the strategies they deployed.

Lecturers or local companies can be invited to mentor the teams and sit on the presentation judging panel.

(See the Corporate Learning page for more information.)

The Finance Lab simulation is designed for KS4/5 and FE students

The simulation delivers both sides of the investing process - research and trading – in one immersive, dual-screen simulation.

Students work together on two linked screens in the roles of Investment Analyst and Media Analyst in a simulated dealing room, testing and developing their skills in a time-pressured environment.

Teams compete to increase the value of their fund by trading in company shares and commodities, navigating the fluctuations of global equity and commodity markets.

The listed multinational companies are based in different parts of the world, with each operating in a different sector of the economy. Cotton, oil and wheat are also traded on the market.

This fast-moving and exciting business game tests many of the skills necessary for working life, including team-working, problem-solving and critical thinking.

Each team's investment decisions will be based on both the analysis of market data and the interpretation of news stories. Students need to think on their feet and respond quickly to new information in order to profit from the potential impact on prices.

Prices are affected both by the impact of investors’ decisions and information in the news.  Students need to assess whether a story about a particular company, commodity or sector will have a positive or negative effect on market confidence and prices.

The simulation supports Business Studies, Economics and Applied Maths teaching.

Students learn the language of the financial markets and the business media, how equity and commodity markets function, the concept of shares and investments, the effect of supply and demand on markets and the impact of news and information on share prices. 

All the game data can be extracted for analysis to allow the application of economic principles and mathematical methods in a range of contexts.    

Students are required to use their judgement in identifying and interpreting key information.  They are offered a challenging way of testing and developing a range of skills in a work-relevant context:

• to communicate, manage information and use numbers;
• to think and solve problems;
• the demonstration of positive attitudes and behaviours;
• to learn responsibly, work with others and participate in projects and tasks.