Guidebook

Trading Outside the U.S.

How does trading work if you’re not a U.S.-based team?

The Wharton Investment Simulator (WInS) allows students to buy and sell a selection of domestic and international equities using real-world market data and without risking real money. WInS is active during the hours of the U.S. stock market on weekdays from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST).

If you’re not based in the U.S., please keep the following in mind throughout the competition:

Consider the time difference between your country and the U.S. stock market. For example, if you are trading in India, you are 9.5 hours ahead of EST. Therefore, you have a window of several evening hours to actively place trades while the U.S. market is open. So, when the U.S. stock market opens at 9:30 a.m. EST, it is actually 7:00 p.m. in India. The early evening hours might be a good window for your team to meet in person or virtually when you are deciding to actively place trades.

We do NOT expect you to stay up in the middle of the night to place trades while the U.S. stock market is open. Remember, the Wharton Global High School Investment Competition is not a trading competition, and therefore day trading is not necessary. The majority of your strategy should be focused on a long-term, buy-and-hold approach, which will not require a lot of buying and selling of stocks once you have, through analysis, determined your best portfolio mix. We do expect you to do some trading once you have built your portfolio (especially since the client has a short-term need); however, you should be strategic about this and not feel pressured to buy and sell frantically at all hours of the night. The bottom line is that you are NOT trying to prove the worthiness of your overall team portfolio/strategy by how much it grows over 10 weeks of trading.

*Please note that you can place U.S. equity trade orders when the U.S. stock market is closed. Your trade will be filled at the open price of the stock once the U.S. stock market reopens the next day.

A few other things to remember about WInS:

WInS executes all U.S. stock trades at real time prices. Please note that although trades are executed at real time prices, and that the bid and ask prices are real time; the prices you see in your open positions are delayed by 10–15 minutes.

International equities not based in the U.S. experience a longer time delay. These equity orders will go through at the end of the trading day. If a trade is placed for an international equity at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, it will clear at the end of Tuesday. Also, exchange rate calculations are done automatically when making trades on foreign markets. There is no extra work on your part, though it is good to be aware of potential gains/losses you may experience due to exchange rates.

You do not need to exchange money in a different currency, it is done automatically when buying and selling.